Given the general interest over the past few decades in restoring heirloom vegetable and fruit cultivars, this seems both backward and abysmally stupid. The only way this might make sense is if the “goes green under prolonged light exposure” issue means that light exposure causes them to develop a toxic level of glycoalkaloids, and I couldn’t find anything to suggest that. There also seems to be some question as to whether they really are harder to machine-harvest than the worst of other varieties that remain certified.
This smells to me like there was something political involved, probably small-scale, inside the Department of Agriculture, and now lost to time.
So… why exactly does the government even have the power to control what varieties farmers grow? I’d understand if the potatoes were diseased or something, but banning farmers from growing something simply because it’s hard to harvest? That seems completely absurd and (knowing no more about this than this story) suggests to me that maybe those government departments have too much regulatory power.
ikr? Makes me want to send them a few bucks to buy a few seed potatoes to grow myself.
I guess I could kind of see an argument for regulating what can be grown to some extent, like a government might want to have domestic food production in case of loss of access to imports, and might therefore have reason to make farmers grow food crops rather than some inedible crop that might have more value, but that still doesn’t explain regulating individual varieties of potato, particularly for this reason. If they clog machinery when harvested, won’t that by itself incentivize farmers not to grow them?
