Potatoes are increasingly viewed as a high-efficiency crop capable of supplying food, ingredients, and bio-based applications, yet their broader potential remains underused in many regions, including North America. Although they deliver high yields per hectare, adapt to diverse climates, and provide accessible nutrients, policy and investment attention continues to focus on cereals such as wheat, maize, rice, and soy. This disconnect shapes how potatoes are grown, stored, and processed, limiting development beyond traditional fresh and processed formats.
Fresh table potatoes, frozen products, and dehydrated forms such as flakes, granules, and flour already underpin a large share of global consumption. Dehydrated products serve as functional inputs for snacks, instant foods, bakery items, and blended products, and their shelf-stability enables movement across borders and seasons. When viewed as an ingredient rather than a commodity, potatoes can reach foodservice, retail, and institutional markets with reduced waste exposure.
Processing streams now support starch, protein, and fibre fractions. Potato starch is used in food formulations and in industrial sectors such as paper, board, textiles, adhesives, and construction materials. Potato protein is emerging in meat alternatives, sports nutrition, pet food, and specialty feeds, while peels and fibre can be directed to livestock feed, biogas, or bio-based materials. Bioplastics and starch composites continue to evolve, although questions remain around chemical safety and end-of-life pathways. A structured biorefinery approach that prioritizes food, followed by ingredients and then energy, can extract greater value per hectare than single-use systems.
The development of baby and creamer potatoes illustrates how targeted breeding and controlled agronomy can convert a by-product into a defined category. Genetics that maintain small size at maturity, strict handling protocols, and consumer-facing packaging have created a premium segment, particularly in North America. This demonstrates how potatoes respond economically when breeding and management focus on specific end-uses.
Underutilization extends beyond lower-income regions. Many countries lack storage, structured seed systems, and flexible processing capacity, but even in North America, the crop is largely channelled into fries, chips, and a limited set of industrial streams. Broader opportunities, such as starch, flour, protein, and regional biorefineries, remain underdeveloped.
Several shifts could expand the crop's role, including reframing potatoes as a resource-efficient option for water- and land-constrained systems, breeding varieties for defined food or industrial applications, strengthening storage and processing infrastructure, and developing circular biorefinery models that use all fractions of the tuber. Innovation in products and communication may also help align consumer and policy attention with the crop's technical versatility.
A platform-crop approach positions potatoes as a resource that supports food systems, ingredient markets, and bio-based industries. The concept moves beyond annual crop management and into system design built around yield efficiency, adaptability, and integrated processing capacity.
Source: Potato News Today
