A new subject is to be added to the primary school curriculum in the Irish Republic next year - the art of growing prize-winning potatoes.
A state-backed agency dedicated to education on farming and food, Agri Aware, is organising a national potato growing competition among 3,200 schools across the Republic, with €8,000 in prizes for the biggest and the best.
The €100,000 project, funded by the department of agriculture, will get underway in February of next year, which has been designated by the UN as the International Year of the Potato.
The project has taken a lead from the British Potato Council’s Grow Your Own Potatoes initiative, which plans to get a quarter of a million schoolchildren involved in 2008.
Agri Aware spokesman Connor Keppel said: “Basically, we are asking teachers and pupils to grow their own potatoes in the period from February to mid-June. Every primary school in the Republic will be sent a growing kit that includes seed potatoes, compost and pots, together with simple instructions, wall posters and classroom materials for the teachers.
“The potatoes can be grown indoors or planted outside if the school has a garden. There will be step-by-step instructions on the whole process, from planting to harvesting.”
At the end of the season, the tubers will be lifted, washed, measured and weighed. The eight winners chosen will each be awarded €1,000, which can be used to start a school garden or, if the school already has one, to expand and develop it.
The aim is to educate the next generation about the potato in an interesting and innovative way, according to Keppel. “Many of today’s children, particularly from urban areas, know only that their chips come from potatoes,” he said. “They know nothing about its place in Irish history, the different varieties or its nutritional value.
“Hopefully, this project will change all that. The growing kit will have detailed information on the history of the potato, its role in Irish culture, the varieties grown here and in other countries, and how the potato can be used as a convenience food. Ultimately, we want to see more young people eating potatoes and they’re more likely to do that, we feel, if they learn how to grow them.”
The initiative comes against a background of falling Irish potato consumption.
Agriculture minister Mary Coughlan has called for product innovation by the industry to counteract “an image problem with younger people, who believe potatoes are time-consuming to prepare and fattening and unfashionable”.
She said research has found that households are buying potatoes less frequently and in smaller qualities, and that the number of growers has fallen to below 600.
