Can Pakistan’s snack giants make the best of our trade troubles?

There is nothing that quite matches the versatility of the humble potato. It goes with anything. You can have it in different textures, soft, hard, in-between. It tastes good in broths, it tastes good fried, it tastes good mashed. According to some, it even tastes good in biryani. It is like that annoying cousin whose qualities your parents just won’t stop brandishing in your face. Perhaps that’s the reason that in the popular rhyme Aaloo Kachaloo Miyan, the mean eggplant has had enough and thinks well to land a hefty kick on the unsuspecting potato miyan.

No wonder then that potato is a staple in so many diets. But its ubiquity in the Pakistani pantry is not as inevitable a thing as might have been supposed. In fact, potatoes aren’t even native to the Indian subcontinent. They were brought here from Peru by Dutch settlers in the late 17th century, and planted on the Malabar coast. And at the time of partition, most of the potato in the subcontinent was being produced on the Indian side. Even so, after partition, the potato didn’t take too long to take over local production and become Pakistan’s largest vegetable crop by area and production.

So much so that in a country where the most prevalent conversation in the agriculture sector is about yields, we have a different problem when it comes to potatoes: we grow simply too many. This year, potato production rose to 9.9 million tonnes, almost 44% higher than official projections, making it the 9th largest producer of potatoes globally. Driven largely by Punjab – which accounts for around 98% of the country’s total output – this rising production is used primarily to satisfy local demand. The surplus is exported to destinations such as Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, UAE, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Malaysia.