Hot Potatoes
- Description
- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
Hot Potatoes reveals the little-known story behind a disaster that changed science forever. Before the Potato Famine of the 1840s wiped out much of Ireland, scientists had little appreciation for the destructive power of microscopic pathogens. The very science of Plant Pathology was born when researchers tried to understand and conquer the blight that had wiped out potato crops throughout Europe.
More than 150 years later, potato late blight is still an immense global threat. Potatoes have gradually become one of the world's three most important sources of nutrition, especially in developing nations. But the failure to heed the warnings of an exceptional scientist back in the 1950s is having dire consequences at the beginning of 21st century.
Hot Potatoes tells the story of American plant geneticist, Dr. John Niederhauser, who was the first to discover that the fungus that destroyed crops in Ireland a century before had likely come from the remote Toluca Valley in Mexico. Starting in the 50s he began a decades-long quest to breed blight-resistant potatoes. He was sure that farmers in developing nations could scarcely afford the sophisticated chemical sprays that were becoming the staple of American, Canadian and European potato production. Darkly, he warned that blight might someday become resistant to many chemicals then available. Decades later, that prediction has come true.
Hot Potatoes is also the story of Don McMoran, a third-generation potato farmer in Washington State who speaks with painful honesty about the expense and uncertainty of using chemical sprays. And it is the tale of Rebecca Nelson, winner of a MacArthur 'genius grant', and a tireless resource for thousands of peasant farmers battling blight in the Peruvian Andes, birthplace of the potato.
Other films by John de Graaf are AFFLUENZA , ESCAPE FROM AFFLUENZA , BUYER BE FAIR , SILENT KILLER: The Unfinished Campaign against Hunger , THE MOTHERHOOD MANIFESTO , BEYOND ORGANIC , ON NATURE'S TERMS , FOR EARTH'S SAKE: The Life and Times of David Brower , DAVID BROWER: A Conversation with Scott Simon , and WHAT'S THE ECONOMY FOR, ANYWAY? .
'With splendid photography and writing, Hot Potatoes is a must-see for farmers, students, researchers, extension workers, policy planners, and media who are interested in knowing more about one of the biggest threats to the food supply throughout the world.' K.V. Raman, Exec. Dir., CEEM, Professor of Plant Breeding, Cornell University
'An interesting and illustrative story...about the dangers of pathogenic resistance to chemicals and unsustainable agriculture...Recommended for college classes studying genetics with an emphasis on food crops, sustainable agriculture or similar subjects. The technical quality is excellent. This would make a superb addition to any college library with an agricultural focus. ' Christy Caldwell, UC Santa Cruz, Educational Media Reviews Online
Citation
Main credits
De Graaf, John (film producer)
De Graaf, John (film director)
De Graaf, John (editor of moving image work)
Hamann, Jack (screenwriter)
Hamann, Jack (film producer)
Hamann, Jack (narrator)
Other credits
Principal photography, Diana Wilmar, David Fox; edited by John de Graaf, Diana Wilmar; original music by Michael Bade.
Distributor subjects
Agriculture; Air Pollution; Biography; Biology; Central America/The Caribbean; Environment; Genetics; Humanities; Latin American Studies; Mexico; Science, Technology, Society; Sustainable AgricultureKeywords
WEBVTT
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[sil.]
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\"Hot Potatoes\" was made possible by financial support from
The Rockefeller Foundation, The Wallace Genetic Foundation,
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The Bullitt Foundation and The United
States Department of Agriculture.
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[sil.]
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[music]
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A farmer and his barefoot-children
break apart soil
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in the highlands of Peru.
They hope to grow potatoes,
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something their ancestors here in the Andes have done
for centuries. But primitive tools and hard work
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may no longer be enough.
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I don\'t need see another
completely destroyed field.
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I\'ve seen more than I need ever to see.
Potatoes are in serious trouble.
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The food that helped fuel
the industrial revolution,
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the crop that helped stave-off
hunger in developing nations
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is under assault from the same scourge that
caused the death of more than a million people
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during the Great Potato Famine in Ireland.
That scourge, a deadly disease
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called \"late blight\", is back with
a vengeance in Latin America,
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in Europe, in Africa and Asia and
increasingly in Canada and the United States.
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This has happened recently in such
wonderful places of the state of Maine.
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The farmers were devastated. It happened
on Prince Edward Island in Canada.
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It\'s happened in the state of Washington.
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No other food crop is sprayed
with as many chemicals.
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Around the globe a race is
on to find a better way -
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something effective,
affordable and sustainable.
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This is the story of one of the hottest topics in
the world of food. A story that may in some ways
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touch the next French fry you will pop in
your mouth, the next grocery store spud
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you will put in your shopping cart.
It… It could be bad. It could be bad.
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Yeah. It\'s kind of scary to think
about the worst scenario. Yes.
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Throwing a bit of baseball, mixing a little
sex, stirring the remarkable life story
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of a visionary rebel researcher whose entire
career was devoted to feeding the hungry
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and the efforts of a brilliant,
young plant pathologist
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and find out why a food most of us take for
granted is now a worldwide hot potato.
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[music]
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There are still places in America
where farms are owned by families,
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where soil is rich, harvests are varied and
crops are watered by rain - not sprinklers.
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In the Skagit Valley - just north of
Seattle - families grow everything,
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from flowers to fruit to fresh market vegetables.
Some of those vegetables are potatoes.
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[music]
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These are red, chieftain red potatoes.
They\'re fresh marketed potatoes.
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Some people like to bake them, fry them or
potato salad or… or they\'re all types, you know.
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I mean, they\'re table-stock potatoes.
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Don McMoran plants 1400 acres of crops a year
- more than half that acreage, in potatoes.
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He spends at least $2,000
an acre raising his spuds,
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for seeds, chemicals, labor, land and
equipment. Most years, he makes money.
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It can be a profitable crop. It can
be a… If everything goes right,
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if Mother Nature treat us good,
she owes the deck of cards.
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But these days, Don\'s been dealt a
handful of jokers and one-eyed jacks.
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In mid-spring, planting season,
potatoes still look promising.
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But just four months later, Don can
smell that something is wrong.
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It\'s an odor you never forget. We\'ll… We\'ll go
over on the side and… and check it over there,
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because I\'d like you to get a whip of yourself
and then you\'ll never forget it. Okay?
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Okay. Oh, yeah! Look at that! It\'s just
kind of squished up, kind of gross.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah. Take your smell. See, that\'s…
Yeah. Huh, yeah! The odor is earthy and sour.
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And that\'s just what your field smells like, right
there. That\'s what we\'re… the odor… we\'re… Yeah.
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Kind of a depressing smell if you\'re
a potato farmer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Here\'s another one. Get another one. Yeah. Right. Right there.
And so, that\'s the effective blight there. Yeah. Uh-huh.
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It just sort of melts it. Just… Just
melts it, yeah. Then it turns a mush.
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It\'s bad news to a spud grower. And… The mush in the
McMoran potato field is caused by the most famous
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and destructive plant disease in the
world, potato late blight. See?
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At the first sign of the ferocious
fungus, Don sends in a chemical sprayer
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to keep his crop from being wiped out.
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So now we\'re using high-pressure, lots of water. We
got… You know, I mean, I\'m just drenching that plant
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with fungicides so it has total protect… total
coverage. And as soon as that coverage is gone,
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as soon as that fungicide has gone off these
leaves, hey, put another one right back on there,
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put another one right back on there to keep that from
spreading, to keep that fungus in check. We\'ve gotta put it on.
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We were… We just gotta do it or… or we could
just take a chance on losing everything.
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Spraying is expensive, more
than a $150 a year per acre
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with saturation coverage required
as often as once every five days.
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Still the blight gets harder to control.
We even came in after the plants were dead
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and put two more applications on, so
we could kill the spores on the soil.
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Yeah! I\'ve never done that before. Yeah. So, was this
the worst year you have seen a blight on this valley?
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Worse for me, yeah, worse for me.
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[music]
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Americans eat a lot of potatoes, on average
about 140 pounds of potatoes each year –
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that\'s about one medium-size spud a day.
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Fifty of those pounds are gobbled as
French fries, another 16 pounds are chips.
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[sil.]
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When they aren\'t fried in fat or slathered with butter,
potatoes are one of the most notorious foods in our diet -
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rich in vitamins B and C
and valuable for minerals,
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fiber and complex carbohydrates,
and farmers like them.
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Only wheat puts more money into the pockets of
Americans who grow food for human consumption.
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[music]
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In Idaho, where the Russet Burbank spud is
king, farmers spend endless hours each autumn
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in the cabs of state of the
art potato harvesters.
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This farm is on the fertile Snake
River plain near Blackfoot, Idaho –
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the self-proclaimed potato
capital of the world.
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In Blackfoot, tourists wander through the
Potato Museum - were among the attractions,
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a photo of Marilyn Monroe,
in a potato sack.
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[music]
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Mr. Potato!
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R-U-S-S-E-T, Russet.
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Down the road in Shelley
- population 3800 -
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nearly every man, woman and child in town,
lines the street for the annual parade
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celebrating spud days. Wanna bite?
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(inaudible)? Its Idaho spud soap.
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Some of it has dehydrated Idaho potatoes
in them, part of it. Ready, set, go!
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[sil.]
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The more adventuresome, grab
a rope and try not to be
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pulled into a giant pit of
watery, mashed potatoes.
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Ready? Pull!
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[sil.]
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[music]
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Any time other than spud days,
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potatoes are serious business in this part of
Idaho. Russet Burbank is the potato powerhouse
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responsible for most French
fries and baked potatoes,
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roll by the millions through processing plants, headed for fast-food
restaurants and supermarket freezers throughout North America.
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[music]
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[sil.]
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But outside North America, potatoes are even more
important. Eighty percent of the world\'s population
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lives in developing countries, pressed
to produce nutritious, inexpensive food.
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[sil.]
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The potato in the developing countries of the
world today is the fastest growing food crop.
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Wherever they can grow potatoes,
they are growing them.
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[music]
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Potatoes can be grown in the cold damp
of Ireland, the arid plains of Mexico
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and the sparse highlands of South America.
An acre of potatoes produces four times
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as many edible calories as an acre of rice,
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five times as much as an acre of wheat. I
consider the potato to be one of the pillars
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of any program to feed the
world in the next century.
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[sil.]
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In 1950, farmers in
non-industrial nations produced
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only 7% of the world\'s potatoes.
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By the year 2000, that
figure had jumped to 40%.
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This man, John Niederhauser,
deserves much of the credit.
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Known to admirers around
the world as \"Mr. Potato\",
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Niederhauser has led an astonishing
life as we will explain in a bit.
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His parlayed, hard work and
a little luck to unlock
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one of the greatest mysteries of plant
pathology – the origin of potato late blight.
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It\'s because of working with John Niederhauser in…
in Mexico and South America that you really see
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how drastic a problem this is.
So, what exactly is late blight?
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There is plenty of it at the USDA Potato
Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland.
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Each one of these test tubes represents
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a farmer\'s field or a
commercial planting that has…
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has been affected with this fungus.
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And you might look it as the little tombstones of farmers\' fields
that… where farmers have actually lost their fields from this fungus.
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Late blight - long classified as a fungus
- is now thought to be part of a kingdom
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that includes brown algae, kelp,
downy mildew, and water molds.
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It\'s a parasite, feasting on the
life-giving simple sugars and starches
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produced in potato leaves and
stored in potato stems and tubers.
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This is disease that\'s
on the potato leaf here
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and in five days it will kill this potato plant. Late
blight\'s talent is its ability to quickly reproduce.
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Invading the internal tissue
of a potato leaf or a stem,
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it leaves a bleak mark, dark
lesions, each of which can produce
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as many as 300,000 powdery spores.
If those spores are blown
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or washed to other plants, the cycle quickly
repeats. And then it\'ll just spread.
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You see it on the whole tops, you know. It\'ll just go on
like fumes then, you know, it\'ll just… it\'ll just spread.
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The disease is called late blight, because
it normally appears only after potato leaves
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reach their maximum fullness. Blight
reproduces more quickly in higher humidity
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and fully mature plants tend to
retain moisture at their base.
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Spores, washed into the soil, eventually infect
the potatoes growing beneath the surface.
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This is what the severely
infected potatoes look like.
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They are very hard, but (inaudible)
see the fruiting of the fungus,
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the white portion on the outside of the
potato. When Ken Deahl holds a dying potato,
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he feels more than just a scientific
interest. My great-great-grandfather
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came from Ireland. He was
an Irish potato farmer.
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And he lost his… his field, his
family, his whole life in Ireland
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because of the… this fungus. The
story is passed on to the family,
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how the cart would come along and they would pick the
relatives that had died the night before from starvation out
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and put into the carts and about the
graveyards that were filled with relatives,
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because it\'s really a drastic disease. When
the Irish potato famine reached its zenith
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in the late 1840s, an average of more
than 1200 bodies a day, every day,
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were carted to graveyards
throughout Ireland.
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Virtually, every potato plant in the country
had turned to mush. It was dreadful.
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People said that it smelled like death. People would
wait for the harvest wondering what would happen.
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At first everything would seem fine,
would be lulled into believing that
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it wasn\'t gonna be bad and then they would smell
that smell and they would know that all is lost.
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All told, more than one million Irish men,
women and children died of starvation,
00:15:55.000 --> 00:15:59.999
another million and a half boarded
rickety boats to seek new lives
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in Canada and the United States.
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The Irish were the unwitting victims
of the potato\'s sweeping success.
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First cultivated here, in the Andes,
the potato was brought to Europe
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in the 16th century by
Spanish conquistadors.
00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:24.999
At first, Europeans either ignored it or
worried that its starchy roots were poisonous.
00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:29.999
It took several generations to realize that
potatoes were highly nutritious and easy to grow
00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:34.999
in both good soils and bad.
00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:39.999
By the 1800s, potatoes had become the primary
staple for Europe\'s emerging working-class.
00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:44.999
The potato grew a tremendous amount of
food on a very small amount of land
00:16:45.000 --> 00:16:49.999
and was quick to cook, easy to cook.
Resources were getting scarce,
00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:54.999
precious resources – time,
money, land, living space, fuel.
00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:59.999
And the potatoes solved
all of those problems.
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None of the victims of the Irish famine
knew what caused their potato leaves
00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:09.999
to wither or their tubers to rot. But in
the 1860s, German botanist Anton de Bary
00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:14.999
identified the culprit – a microbe,
he called \"Phytophthora infestans\",
00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:19.999
Latin for \"plant destroyer\".
With that discovery,
00:17:20.000 --> 00:17:24.999
the whole science of plant pathology
was born. And in a way this made us…
00:17:25.000 --> 00:17:29.999
this helped us to formulate
the germ theory of disease,
00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:34.999
which led to the… to changes in the way of thinking as
to how we practice medicine and veterinary medicine
00:17:35.000 --> 00:17:39.999
and in addition to plant pathology
and disease control in plants.
00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:44.999
Despite the blight, potato farmers
persevered, some stumbled across varieties
00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:49.999
that seemed to have certain resistance to
Phytophthora, others sprayed their crops
00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:54.999
with a coating of copper sulfate
and lime, with mixed results.
00:17:55.000 --> 00:17:59.999
And in the century following the Great
Famine, late blight helped to shape history
00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:04.999
in Europe and America. The story of the
Irish is the one that\'s been told often.
00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:09.999
Many people understand that blight came into
Ireland and wiped out a crop and the people
00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:14.999
and led to mass immigrations
to the United States.
00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:19.999
But what is probably less well
known is that this disease also
00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:24.999
played a significant role during World
War I. At the height of the war,
00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:29.999
a late blight epidemic swept through Eastern Europe.
As a result of this, over 600,000 German peasants
00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:34.999
starved to death during the year of 1916.
00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:39.999
And it may well have been a contributing factor in
the eventual loss of World War I by the Germans.
00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:44.999
Thirty years later, just after the Second
World War, blight was changing lives
00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:49.999
in the northwest corner of the United
States. My dad, in \'48, you know,
00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:54.999
I mean, he got blighted out in spuds. And
here it is, 50 years later and it\'s…
00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:59.999
it\'s haunting his son. Yeah, yeah.
00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:04.999
The McMorans have been harvesting
potatoes here since 1909.
00:19:05.000 --> 00:19:09.999
Don\'s grandfather and father made
good money raising potatoes,
00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:14.999
until one day in 1948, when a customer complained
that a huge shipment in a railcar had gone bad.
00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.999
Don\'s dad went to investigate.
00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:24.999
A couple of hundred yards away from the car, he could smell…
smell the potatoes. Late blight had destroyed his entire crop.
00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:29.999
Don\'s father never grew another potato.
00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:34.999
Yet, Don himself became a potato farmer.
His confidence boosted by the availability
00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:39.999
of a new generation of chemical sprays. One
chemical in particular sold under the brand Ridomil
00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:44.999
seemed to be a magic bullet. When we
first had Ridomil and had blight,
00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:49.999
you could go out and just stop it, just
stop it cold. You know, I… I thought,
00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:54.999
well, boy, we\'ve got it now.
00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.999
But the miracle turned to mush. In the early
1990s, frantic farmers in Washington State
00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.999
began reporting a kind of late blight so strong
that Ridomil seemed powerless to stop it.
00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:09.999
The first leaf I got was from a farmer,
00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:14.999
who sent to me and said, \"I have
treated my field at least seven times
00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:19.999
with this fungicide and I still am
losing my field. What\'s the problem?\"
00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:24.999
And I thought perhaps his inability to
cover his crop with spray or whatever.
00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.999
So I isolated from his
impure culture and grew it
00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.999
on additional concentrations of that fungicide
which I told him to use, and sure enough,
00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:39.999
it did not control the fungus, not only
that, but the fungus was very happy.
00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.999
In fact, it was busy having sex. The
fungus can reproduce by two means.
00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.999
One, it puts out little braches
and… and puts a little…
00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
put some spores out and
that\'s an asexual technique
00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
and it… it is something that requires
no mating of any kind at all.
00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
There\'s a second kind of reproduction,
a sexual cycle of reproduction,
00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
which requires two mating types.
00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
Previous outbreaks of blight involved only one
mating type, known to scientists as Type A1.
00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
But now to the surprise of almost everyone
a second genetically distinct type
00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
of late blight was spreading
across the Northern Hemisphere.
00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
The mysterious new strain was named A2.
00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
A1 and A2 is just a way to designate
the mating type of the fungus,
00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
and you can think of a girl-boy if that is
simpler. But you need both mating types
00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
before you can have sexual recombination.
00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
A1 and A2 began mating, and as the
two mating types swapped genes,
00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
they created new strains of the disease. And the
strains or the progeny of… of these new strains now
00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
are more virulent, more aggressive than the
perennial strains that it started out with.
00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
Like a prairie fire, the
new strains of A1 and A2
00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
swept across the potato-growing
regions of the United States,
00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
forcing many farms into bankruptcy.
00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
[music]
00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
From Washington State to Maine,
00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
fields, farms and dreams
were lost to the blight.
00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
I\'ve just grown every other potatoes for the last four years on
the same plot and last year it got hit with the late blight.
00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
So, I suppose I\'ll left between 30% and
40% of the crop in the ground last year.
00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
And there just wasn\'t enough money left to…
to pay all the bills, much less keep on.
00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
And it wasn\'t just that the new blight was
more aggressive, when A1 and A2 mate,
00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
they create nasty little
pods called oospores.
00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
The oospores is like a seed. It has a
thick wall. It can remain alive in…
00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
in the soil for years. In Holland - one of the
first countries to notice the invasion of A2 -
00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
farmers had grown used to assuming that late
blight could only survive on live potatoes,
00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
stored through the winter. Now with these
new strains, we have a different situation,
00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
because the… the fungus is now able
to survive as oospores in the soil,
00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
meaning that in every piece of land
00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
where you want to grow potatoes, the pathogen is already
there, it may just jump up from the soil and infect your crop.
00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
This depressing new development
left anxious farmers
00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
scratching their heads: where did
the A2 mating type come from
00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
and how was it that the warnings sounded by
a brilliant scientist were all but ignored
00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
for more than 40 years?
00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
April 1935, an 18-year-old
California whizz-kid learned that
00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
Cornell University had accepted him, offering
a full scholarship starting in the fall.
00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
With years of college ahead, young
John Niederhauser wanted to travel.
00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
He walked up to the Cunard
Line and plunked down $99.
00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
I asked them where did they sail to
in Europe? They said, to London,
00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
Hamburg, Helsinki, and Leningrad.
00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
I looked at the map. I said,
I want to go to Leningrad.
00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
It was the Soviet Union, newly reopened
to Westerners for the first time
00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
since the end of the Bolshevik revolution nearly
two decades earlier. John landed in Leningrad,
00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
then made his way to Moscow, where one day
he wandered into an agricultural exhibit
00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
sponsored by the US Government. All
the labels and so on were in English.
00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
And since I\'d been there almost two months
00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
and I had not seen a single word that I can
understand, I emphatically was stroking the words of…
00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
on these signs and looking at them,
00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
and that is when a gentleman tapped
me on the shoulder and asked me
00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
if I spoke English. And I said, yes, I do.
00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
And that was Vavilov.
Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov,
00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
and he just happened to be the world\'s foremost
geneticist, famous for his groundbreaking research
00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
on the origin of cultivated plants.
00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
Vavilov asked young Niederhauser if he\'d ever been on a
farm. I said, well, \"I milk cows and I drove a tractor.\"
00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
And he said, \"You drove a tractor?\" Well,
that was like saying you… you… you\'ve…
00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
you were a pilot on a supersonic
transport at that time.
00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
They were importing the first tractors and they
didn\'t have any tractor drivers and so on.
00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
Well, he… and he got me
a job down the Ukraine.
00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
That summer, Niederhauser taught Soviet
researchers how to drive tractors
00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
and they in turn taught him to speak Russian.
Impressed, Vavilov invited his American friend
00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
to study at the Soviet
Agricultural Academy.
00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
And he was so nice to me that I
felt that I was being impolite
00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
if I didn\'t agree that this
was a wonderful opportunity.
00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
Here I am at school. I\'d come
back from the summer\'s work
00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
and we lived on a dormitory like this.
Now, this is my student study book.
00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
It\'s your report card! It\'s my report card.
This is the…
00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
These are the grades, right down here. And I
will say that I am very proud of my grades,
00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
because I got all A\'s,
expect for one course.
00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
That course was Political Economy. And
believe me, I knew none of the answers.
00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
After a year-and-a-half in the
USSR, John was ready at last
00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.999
to begin studying agriculture at Cornell.
00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:59.999
Working summers as a potato seed
inspector, he was an exceptional student,
00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
eventually yearning a PhD in 1943.
By then, the world was at war.
00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
Back in Leningrad, Vavilov had
assembled a collection of seeds
00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
from 187,000 species – the
world\'s greatest depository
00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
of genetic diversity.
00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
But in 1940, Vavilov was imprisoned – a
victim of Stalin\'s purge of intellectuals.
00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
Between 1941 and \'44,
00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
scientists at Vavilov\'s Leningrad
institute were forced to endure
00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
a 900-day Nazi assault on
their beleaguered city.
00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
Six hundred thousand citizens of
Leningrad died of starvation,
00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
including nine of Vavilov\'s assistants. Those scientists
chose to die rather than touch stockpiles of rice,
00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:54.999
corn and other grains that
would have saved their lives.
00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.999
The genetic diversity stored
within those seed collections
00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
have since helped feed people around the
world. Vavilov also died of starvation
00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
in one of Stalin\'s infamous prisons.
00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
If he had not tapped you on the shoulder
that day? I\'d be back at Cornell that July.
00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
And how likely is that that you would have
ended up being as interested in potatoes?
00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
I\'ll never know. World War II
ended and shortly thereafter,
00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
Niederhauser took a job in Toluca
– a scenic, high altitude town,
00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
southwest of Mexico City.
00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:43.000
[music]
00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:53.000
[non-English narration]
00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
Almost 50 years after he first set foot
in Toluca, John Niederhauser returns.
00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
[non-English narration]
00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
His first assignment back in the 1940s had been to evaluate
diseases affecting Toluca\'s beans, corn and wheat.
00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
When I came to this area, I looked around
00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
and there the corn was and the other crops and I
asked them: \"Why don\'t you grow any potatoes?\"
00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
At the beginning he wanted to show people
that this area was good for potatoes,
00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
because nobody grew potatoes there. And the Mexican
farmers said, no, it\'s… it\'s not possible.
00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
And they said, it\'s because
the potato won\'t grow here.
00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
Well, I looked around and saw the nice
climate and the… the… especially a few trees
00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
and you just see in many potato
growing areas of the world
00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
and just kind of my instinct of
feeling was that it, this can\'t true.
00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
He bought a couple of potatoes from a
local market, planted them in his garden
00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
and within six weeks, they
were dead of late blight.
00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
And I frankly was just amazed. I couldn\'t figure
out. The farmers, of course, just shook their heads
00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
and couldn\'t believe that a young
man like this could be so ignorant
00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
about agriculture and Mexico. Unfazed, he reassured
local farmers that a shipment of special potatoes,
00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
blight-resistant, was on its way
from his friends at Cornell.
00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
They said, \"John, you\'re crazy!\" Well,
I said, \"You are gonna see a miracle.\"
00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
And we planted them and, of
course, by the end of June,
00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
all these blight-immune potatoes
were dead from late blight.
00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.999
Well, by then they knew I was crazy. And if I
was… not… didn\'t have any more sense than that,
00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.999
what could you know about
corn, wheat and beans.
00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.999
Well, this, of course, was the first report
00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:59.999
that this immunity due to
really one or two genes
00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.999
was ineffective in Mexico, nobody knew
that. But why? Why should a potato
00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.999
bred to be immune to blight in New
York be unless in Toluca, Mexico?
00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.999
The answer required a much closer look. This
is dead? This is because of late blight?
00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:19.999
Yeah. And this late blight, here. You
can see here. This one, you see?
00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.999
Look at here, ah… you can see some of
the white… The white, are those spores?
00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.999
The… The white are spores, yeah. In one leaf, like
this one, can have thousands of spores to the…
00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:34.999
In an experimental field in Toluca,
Mexican botanist Hector Lozoya
00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.999
continues work that John Niederhauser
began a half century earlier.
00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.999
We discovered that there were A1s and A2s,
00:31:45.000 --> 00:31:49.999
here in Mexico, we called them that.
The offspring of A1 and A2
00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
were aggressive enough to kill every potato
in Niederhauser\'s experimental garden,
00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
even those bred elsewhere for resistance. Yet, as
he explored the slopes of the 15,000 foot volcano
00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
that rises above the Toluca Valley,
00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
Niederhauser was amazed to discover about
two dozen species of wild potatoes -
00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
species that seemed somehow nearly immune to the
invisible clouds of blight that swept the region.
00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
How could that be? If the fungus were
able to kill all of those wild species
00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
then the fungus wouldn\'t
have anywhere to go.
00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
The fungus would disappear. So what we\'re
describing here is quite of a biologic balance
00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.999
between the fungus causing
disease and the local population
00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.999
with enough resistance to
keep both of them going.
00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.999
But that biological balance had even greater implications.
Remember Vavilov? By strange and happy coincidence,
00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.999
it was Vavilov decades earlier,
00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:54.999
who had figured out how scientists could hunt down
the place where a plant disease had first emerged.
00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.999
According to Vavilov, you find a group of
resistant wild species and the fungus there
00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.999
and that\'s the place of origin of the
fungus. And I said, \"This is it!\"
00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.999
Wow! Now, that was a big breakthrough.
00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
In 1954, Vavilov\'s accidental student
had reached the startling conclusion
00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
that all the world\'s potato late blight could
ultimately be traced to this isolated valley in Mexico.
00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
We are almost certain that
this is the place of origin
00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
of this fungus. And it went from here,
00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
in the 1830s to Europe,
to the United States,
00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
and from Europe all over the world. But it began here.
Energized, Niederhauser and his Mexican colleagues
00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
began breeding the blight-resisted
but inedible wild potatoes
00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:49.999
with their good-tasting domesticated
cousins. Toluca was a perfect laboratory,
00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
since he could test his new varieties against
the swarm of aggressive blight in the valley.
00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
Nonetheless, it was a lonely
time-consuming chore.
00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
Niederhauser kept constantly in
the field, working in the field.
00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
And he knew very well what he was
doing and what he was going to.
00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.999
And he was very successful
here, in the Toluca Valley.
00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.999
Throughout the valley, purple and white blossoms
began emerging from new potato varieties
00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.999
known affectionately by local farmers
as \"Niederhauser\'s daughters\".
00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:29.999
At the beginning he bap… - how to
say – baptized some varieties:
00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.999
Anita, Bertita, Conchita, Dorita, Juanita.
00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
Each variety represented a new
cross between a wild potato
00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
with some evolutionary resistance
to the local strains of late blight
00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.999
and domesticated potatoes with color, texture and
taste that appealed to farmers and their customers.
00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.999
When I arrived here,
00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:59.999
they were very used to what
we call a prairie of potato:
00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.999
red-skinned, browned, deep-eyes. Anything we
put out beside that but didn\'t look like that,
00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
they said was not good quality.
00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
But Niederhauser persisted,
slowly selling rural farmers
00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
on the advantages of his
blight-resistant potatoes.
00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
[sil.]
00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:29.999
In time, farmers in Toluca embraced
Niederhauser\'s amazing new potatoes.
00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.999
Manuel Villaverde\'s father rose from
peasant farmer to wealthy landowner.
00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
A bronze plaque on the Villaverde
Estate credits that success to potatoes
00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
and John Niederhauser.
But in a strange twist
00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.999
Niederhauser made an even bigger mark
in a distinctly different field.
00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.999
[music]
00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:59.999
In Mexico, I\'m far more widely known because of the Little
League baseball than anything we\'ve done in agriculture.
00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.999
[music]
00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:09.999
During his long assignment in Mexico,
00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:14.999
Niederhauser and his wife Anne
raised five sons and a daughter.
00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.999
In the early 1950s, John organized neighborhood
leagues so their boys could grow up playing baseball.
00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.999
Thus was born the Mexican Little League.
00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.999
Its first ever commissioner was Mr.
Potato, John Niederhauser.
00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:34.999
[non-English narration]
00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:39.999
More than 40 years later, a
reunion, in a spacious stadium
00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.999
in Monterrey, Mexico.
00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.999
In 1957, most of these men were 11 and
12-year-olds playing ball for coach Cesar Faz.
00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.999
Field in (inaudible) had a track
going through center field
00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.999
and ever so often we have to stop
the game because a train came by.
00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
Well, we had uniforms and bats and all that
thing, but… Old-age balls. Old-age balls, right.
00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:09.999
An old glove, old shoes. Old glove.
Used shoes. Used shoes, yeah.
00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.999
The Monterrey team was led by
star pitcher Angel Macias.
00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.999
Bob Niederhauser played the same position
00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.999
for his father\'s Mexico City team.
00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.999
In 1957, Cesar\'s scruffy team from Monterrey shocked
the baseball world by becoming the first non-US team
00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:34.999
to win the Little League World Series.
00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:39.999
Angel Macias pitched the
first and only perfect game
00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.999
in Little League World Series history. From
then on, baseball players from Latin America
00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.999
became a serious force on the international sports scene, including
some of the biggest stars in the American major leagues.
00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
And in Mexico, they still call a baseball
00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.999
that is hard to handle a \"papa
caliente\", a hot potato.
00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.999
So, both baseball and potatoes
00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:09.999
owe a lot of their history to just one man.
00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.999
But potatoes came first, and
throughout the 1950s and 60s,
00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.999
Niederhauser\'s Mexican experiments paid dividends.
He attracted the attention of researchers
00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.999
around the world. A few came to Toluca to study
his resistant breeding program firsthand.
00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:29.999
He was the first scientist
who deliberately said,
00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.999
\"I will not use vertical resistance and
I will use horizontal resistance.\"
00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:39.999
Vertical resistance is when a single gene
protects a plant from an invading disease.
00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.999
It usually works well, but
provides only a temporary fix.
00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:49.999
What happens with vertical resistance
is it provides complete protection
00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.999
against potato blight, for example,
for a varying number of years.
00:38:55.000 --> 00:38:59.999
Usually in… in commercial crops in temperate countries,
it\'s three to five years and then it breaks down.
00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:04.999
However, on one of these… So,
Niederhauser took a different approach.
00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:09.999
He bred varieties with many
resistant genes, not just one.
00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:14.999
Each gene provided only partial protection, which meant
a potato field might have some blight every year.
00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:19.999
But the disease spread much more
slowly and John\'s fields required
00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.999
little or no pesticides. This horizontal
resistance is also known as \"durable resistance\",
00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:29.999
since it usually stays effective
for a very long time.
00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:34.999
Unfortunately the majority of plant breeders have
not followed this lead. They preferred to stay
00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:39.999
with vertical resistance. And many of them
have abandoned resistance breeding completely
00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:44.999
and have relied on pesticides,
either insecticides or fungicides.
00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.999
And this is why we\'re now
using so many of these…
00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.999
\\these chemicals on our crops.
00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:59.999
Drenching a potato plant with enough of the right
chemicals creates a thin protective shield,
00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.999
making it difficult for blight
spores to drill into a leaf.
00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.999
Currently the only way that we
have of managing late blight -
00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:14.999
I didn\'t say controlling, I said managing late blight in
the potato production system – is the use of fungicides.
00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.999
The consumers in… in our country
are… we\'re kind of spoiled here.
00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.999
We like to go to the supermarket and get
our produce with no blemishes on it,
00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:29.999
with no insect (inaudible)
or anything like that.
00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.999
And, in fact, in order to
produce vegetables and a crop
00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.999
that\'s free of this kind of damage
requires chemical inputs to do that.
00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.999
That kind of attitude worked
to dim international interest
00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.999
in Niederhauser\'s breeding program. Who cares about late
blight. It only happens in Toluca, in the Toluca Valley.
00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.999
That\'s what people thought
30 or 40 years ago.
00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:59.999
Now, that it\'s… it\'s being more aggressive
and more widespread, people say,
00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.999
\"Hey, let\'s go back to what Niederhauser was
doing and let\'s check again on his materials.\"
00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:09.999
I kept telling them about this
resistance, but for a decade or two
00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:14.999
I was merely told that they were
going to spray potatoes anyway,
00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.999
and why they… they didn\'t
need this resistance.
00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.999
One day in the 1960s, a fellow researcher told Niederhauser
that one of his breeding projects was being shutdown.
00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.999
He said we are receiving two grants
from two chemical companies.
00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.999
And he said, \"We have been told
by their representative here,
00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:39.999
if we do this work on with you on blight
resistance, they will cancel their grants.\"
00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.999
The chemical industry
00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:49.999
is very hostile to the idea
of horizontal resistance if,
00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:54.999
for example, we had potatoes that
did not need to be sprayed at all,
00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:59.999
that would be a big chunk out of the
pesticide chemical industry\'s market.
00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.999
The advent of relatively inexpensive
00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:09.999
and very effective fungicides for late blight, I
think, probably did stall the progress of the…
00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.999
the breeding programs… breeding
programs for late blight resistance.
00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.999
Ah… Of course, in retrospect you can say, gee,
it\'s too bad that we… we… we sort of let that…
00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:24.999
that effort die down and that perhaps
we should have been more active on it.
00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:29.999
But in a business where research dollars
00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.999
are constantly dwindling and a
problem appears to be solved,
00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:39.999
I guess I can see why things
went the way they did.
00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:44.999
If they took about 2% or 3% of what they spent on
these sprays and invested it in research program,
00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:49.999
they would do without the sprays.
00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.999
The decision not to fund Niederhauser\'s
research proved shortsighted.
00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:59.999
Sometime in the mid-1970s, the
A2 mating type escaped Toluca.
00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:04.999
Looking at it backwards now,
00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:09.999
I have the feeling that someday this would happen.
There is too much international movement.
00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:14.999
Now we are considerably more concerned
and it seems that the important changes
00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:19.999
that we make either in… in
development particularly,
00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:24.999
usually, are in response to a crisis.
And we\'re going through a crisis now.
00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:29.999
By the early 1990s, A1 and A2
were mating around the world
00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:34.999
and farmers struggled to cope with the
often crippling cost of chemical sprays.
00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:39.999
Many people now realizes that
Niederhauser was right at the beginning.
00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:44.999
Usually for a scientist, he\'s 30
or 40 years ahead of his time,
00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:49.999
then he does not live long enough to
see the… his work recognized and…
00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:54.999
and getting the recognition that he
deserves. In John Niederhauser\'s case,
00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:59.999
recognition is… is… has already come.
00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:04.999
In 1990, he was awarded the World Food Prize
– an honor equivalent to the Nobel Prize.
00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:09.999
But it\'s coming in much more important ways
00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:14.999
in the sense that other scientists are now
beginning to copy what he did in potatoes
00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:19.999
and they\'re beginning to copy
it in other crops as well.
00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.999
[music]
00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:29.999
Even as he celebrated his 80th birthday
00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:34.999
with family and friends, John
Niederhauser refused to fully retire.
00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:39.999
Oh, I don\'t believe this! Wow!
00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:44.999
A half century after he first set foot in
Mexico, he sorts through letters of praise
00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:49.999
from admirers around the world.
Oh, look at this!
00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:54.999
Happy Birthday, John Niederhauser!
Well, look at the card! There!
00:44:55.000 --> 00:45:03.000
[sil.]
00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:09.999
The future of the potato
00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:14.999
just might lie in the developing world, where
others are carrying out Niederhauser\'s vision.
00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:23.000
[sil.]
00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:39.999
Here, in Peru, high in the Andes,
00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:44.999
is the place where edible potatoes were first
planted. It\'s part of their cultural heritage.
00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:49.999
It\'s part of their… their cuisine. They… They value
potato highly from historical and cultural perspective.
00:45:50.000 --> 00:45:54.999
They consider themselves potato growers.
00:45:55.000 --> 00:45:59.999
Yes, that\'s what I am.
That I\'m a potato grower.
00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:04.999
In Peru, potato growers have
come to adore Rebecca Nelson.
00:46:05.000 --> 00:46:09.999
Rebecca is a plant pathologist. The brilliant
leader of a team of international scientists,
00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:14.999
struggling to convince peasant
farmers that blight can be beaten.
00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:19.999
There\'s a lot of potato
growers here who won\'t…
00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:24.999
aren\'t growing potatoes. \"Yes, we\'re potato growers. No, we won\'t touch potatoes.\"
Yeah, I don\'t blame them. I mean, unless we can really give them something,
00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:29.999
you know, unless they can… they can convince
themselves that they have a good solution that\'s not,
00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:34.999
you know, gonna collapse on them. It\'s… It\'s a
bad investment. It\'s a bad… It\'s a bad risk.
00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:39.999
[music]
00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:44.999
Now, potatoes in Peru aren\'t
like French fries in America.
00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:49.999
Here, in the highlands,
00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:54.999
potatoes are the primary source of nutrition –
a food that many eat morning, noon and night.
00:46:55.000 --> 00:46:59.999
But blight is such a threat, some
farmers are simply giving up.
00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:04.999
It\'s heartbreaking when you see so many
farmers (inaudible) with their crop.
00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:09.999
In a way it\'s an honor for a plant pathologist to
be working on such a devastating problem, but, man,
00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:14.999
I need to see another melted field.
We often encounter farmers who…
00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:19.999
who are fed up. The losses are so terrible
00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:24.999
and too… too frequent. And
it\'s a bad investment.
00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:29.999
Andean farmers know all
about bad investments.
00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:34.999
A few years back, gringo scientists like
Rebecca brought them a potato variety
00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:39.999
that promised to be tasty
and resistant to blight.
00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.999
That breed was planted in thousands
of fields. It didn\'t work.
00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:49.999
Just when we were gloating over our impact, kaboom. Blight struck
with a vengeance, and just like John Niederhauser in Mexico,
00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:54.999
Rebecca realized that single-gene vertical
resistance had failed spectacularly.
00:47:55.000 --> 00:47:59.999
Farmers, many now desperate,
00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:04.999
increasingly turned to pesticides.
00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:13.000
[music]
00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:34.999
Rebecca often travels through
Peruvian towns and marketplaces.
00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:39.999
She talks with farmers about blight
00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.999
and often hears complaints about chemicals.
This is Yungay.
00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:49.999
It\'s a… It\'s a very high quality,
a very desirable potato.
00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:54.999
And people want to grow Yungay.
And if you wanna grow Yungay,
00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.999
under most conditions you have to spray a lot
of fungicide. At the (inaudible) market,
00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.999
pesticides are easy to find.
00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:09.999
Here, chemicals are sold by children.
00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.999
What are these things?
This says DDT on the back?
00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:19.999
It may or may not be DDT. They often
sell adulterated or… or just,
00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:24.999
you know, wrong stuff under the label. But, I
mean, I guess we\'d be lucky if this was DDT.
00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:29.999
Should they be worried about their health if they\'re using these
things? Oh, yeah, we got… I mean, every problem you could name
00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:34.999
with the use of even… even fungicides, which are… which
are not as same as killers as lot of insecticides,
00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:39.999
but they\'re still, you know, they\'re bad for your health. They are
saying give us something to protect ourselves because we feel terrible
00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.999
after we spray fungicides. You know, I believe that particularly
in the view of the fact that they are taking a bath
00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:49.999
in the fungicides, that\'s why they\'re asking me please give me something
to protect myself. You know, this cloud of fungicide that I\'m breathing,
00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:54.999
I got this… I\'m walking through this lush growth
of foliage that I\'m drenching with fungicide,
00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:59.999
they\'re taking a bath.
00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:04.999
Certainly, financially not
a good thing for people.
00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:09.999
We can either improve their fungicide use
00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:14.999
or decrease their need for fungicide use through the use of
resistance. Those are probably two things that we can do for them.
00:50:15.000 --> 00:50:19.999
Like John Niederhauser,
00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:24.999
Rebecca believes resistance is key
to keeping potatoes affordable.
00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:29.999
At the headquarters of the
International Potato Center in Lima,
00:50:30.000 --> 00:50:34.999
Rebecca\'s fellow scientists aim
every state of the art weapon
00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:39.999
they can afford at resisting blight.
00:50:40.000 --> 00:50:44.999
You see this area in a central (inaudible)?
Uh-huh. Where it\'s probably highest potato…
00:50:45.000 --> 00:50:49.999
They pay particular attention to battlegrounds
in places like Eastern Europe and China,
00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:54.999
where potatoes are both a huge part of
the diet and dangerously susceptible
00:50:55.000 --> 00:50:59.999
to the new strains of blight. This year. So,
you get a lot of… a lot of potato right,
00:51:00.000 --> 00:51:04.999
we\'ve got a lot of red. Exactly, exactly.
The have a huge pressure.
00:51:05.000 --> 00:51:09.999
A few years back, Rebecca was honored with a so-called
\"Genius\' Grant\" from the MacArthur Foundation.
00:51:10.000 --> 00:51:14.999
She is a scientist who
likes to leave the lab,
00:51:15.000 --> 00:51:19.999
frequently traveling to the
farthest reaches of the Andes,
00:51:20.000 --> 00:51:24.999
to fields more than 13,000
feet above sea level.
00:51:25.000 --> 00:51:29.999
In this experimental plot,
potato center scientists
00:51:30.000 --> 00:51:34.999
and local farmers raise 950 varieties
- both wild species and new breeds -
00:51:35.000 --> 00:51:39.999
creating a colorful tapestry
of potato diversity.
00:51:40.000 --> 00:51:44.999
Some day, every valley in the Andes
may have its own unique variety,
00:51:45.000 --> 00:51:49.999
each needing little or no spraying.
00:51:50.000 --> 00:51:58.000
[music]
00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:09.999
At the heart of Rebecca\'s passion
are subsistence farmers.
00:52:10.000 --> 00:52:14.999
This puppet show mixes topical humor
with basic agricultural science.
00:52:15.000 --> 00:52:23.000
[non-English narration]
00:52:25.000 --> 00:52:29.999
The entertainment gives way to
science - hands-on experiments,
00:52:30.000 --> 00:52:34.999
reinforcing the importance of
planting resistant varieties
00:52:35.000 --> 00:52:39.999
and taking other steps to reduce the impact of blight. Last
time, I saw them do this, one group separated and said,
00:52:40.000 --> 00:52:44.999
these are bad, these are not bad. The
second group, looking at that group said,
00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:49.999
no, they\'re fine, plant them all. So the idea is… We
fear last year, but they\'re gonna go ahead and plant
00:52:50.000 --> 00:52:54.999
in an experiment to the
test which view is correct.
00:52:55.000 --> 00:52:59.999
So… So the advantage of us teaming up with
farmers is that they can get the material sooner
00:53:00.000 --> 00:53:04.999
and that if we do in the context of a training program, they can
learn more, they get more than the seed, they get knowledge
00:53:05.000 --> 00:53:09.999
that they need to… to… to use
the seed well effectively.
00:53:10.000 --> 00:53:14.999
[non-English narration]
00:53:15.000 --> 00:53:19.999
I really don\'t understand
00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:24.999
why agriculture is so unfashionable.
Given that people eat three times a day
00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:29.999
and that such a large proportion of
the world\'s surface is… is farmed,
00:53:30.000 --> 00:53:34.999
I don\'t see why people don\'t have more respect
for it, are not willing to invest in it.
00:53:35.000 --> 00:53:39.999
World hunger, you know, it\'s still there. There\'re
still 700 million hungry people out there.
00:53:40.000 --> 00:53:44.999
That for me is motivating. You
know, I… I care about that.
00:53:45.000 --> 00:53:49.999
When you\'re down there and you\'re working with
people who don\'t… are not able to afford to spray
00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:54.999
and you see how drastic the problem this is,
then you come back with what the realization,
00:53:55.000 --> 00:53:59.999
you\'ve gotta do something. We may
not live without fungicides at all,
00:54:00.000 --> 00:54:04.999
but at least we can live
with less fungicides.
00:54:05.000 --> 00:54:09.999
[music]
00:54:10.000 --> 00:54:14.999
A century from now, it is estimated
00:54:15.000 --> 00:54:19.999
that the population will be at least
12 billion and perhaps 14 billion,
00:54:20.000 --> 00:54:24.999
according to the present indicators.
If that occurs,
00:54:25.000 --> 00:54:29.999
roughly 90% of this population will be in what
we call developing countries of the world.
00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:34.999
Then, the question is:
00:54:35.000 --> 00:54:39.999
where is the food going to come from?
And now, even in the United States,
00:54:40.000 --> 00:54:44.999
farmers are demanding more sustainable
ways to produce potatoes.
00:54:45.000 --> 00:54:49.999
Some worry about the uncertain
long-term effects of chemicals,
00:54:50.000 --> 00:54:54.999
others simply can\'t keep up
with the high cost of spraying.
00:54:55.000 --> 00:54:59.999
The more chemicals is not the answer to
fungicides and… and it\'s too costly and…
00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:04.999
and we\'re not getting the control either. And…
And so, we\'ve gotta… we\'ve gotta get that
00:55:05.000 --> 00:55:09.999
resistance spread into the plant. But
it will come too late for Don McMoran.
00:55:10.000 --> 00:55:14.999
After watching blight drive his
father out of the potato business,
00:55:15.000 --> 00:55:19.999
after three decades of
battling blight himself,
00:55:20.000 --> 00:55:24.999
one of the most determined farmers in the
Skagit Valley has given up on spuds.
00:55:25.000 --> 00:55:30.000
At age 52, Don McMoran
sold his potato farm.
