Argentina
papa
Year2007
Production
2 145 000 tons
Harvested area
167 960 acres
Yield
12.78 tons/acre
Although western Argentina lies within the area of origin of wild potatoes, evidence of potato production there dates from the 1870s, when 6 000 acres were planted with tubers almost certainly imported from Europe. Today, potato production is large-scale and highly mechanized, and concentrated around Buenos Aires and Santa Fe.
Over the past half century, Argentina's potato output has changed very little: the 2007 harvest of 2.14 million tons was only slightly less than that of 1961. In fact, since the early 1960s the national harvest has averaged around 2.2 million tons, with only occasional peaks (such as in 1998, when it reached 3.7 million). Levels of potato consumption, of around 100 lb per capita per year in 2005, have also changed little since 1990.
What has changed markedly is yield. Along with a steady drop in the size of the harvested area, from 500 000 acres in 1961 to around 170 000 in 2007, per acre yields have more than tripled to almost 13 tons. In 2005, Argentina exported 36 000 tons of potatoes and 4 500 tons of potato flour.
Further details from CIP's World Potato Atlas