NARRATOR: They are the ultimate
comfort food, and the world's most productive crop. Mash them, bake
them, freeze them. Just make sure you duck
when you fire them. From the Andes to Ireland,
from Idaho to outer space, they are everyone's
favorite tuber. Chips, fries, even spirits. The gang's all here. So get off that couch, and keep
your eyes peeled, because it's the potato on Modern Marvels. [theme music] Your mother always said it's the
most important meal of the day. And with any good breakfast,
there has to be potatoes. Few know this better than the
folks at the original Pantry Cafe in downtown Los Angeles. My dad used to cook
bacon, ham, potatoes. That was every morning. Reminds me of being at home. You know you always want
potatoes with breakfast. NARRATOR: Established
in 1924, the Pantry serves breakfast
24/7, 365 days a year. In fact, because
they never close, there's no lock
on the front door. Their potatoes are fresh,
and the demand constant. Each spud is peeled and
steamed, not boiled. That's their secret to both
great breakfast potatoes, and if you're staying
for lunch or dinner, the best mashed potatoes. We do country potatoes for
breakfast with the grill. And then we get mashed potatoes. We do 20 cases a day, which
is 1,000 pounds of potatoes. NARRATOR: That's more
than 180 tons a year. Not bad, given the entire joint
only seats 60 people at a time. Everything comes
with potatoes. It's comfort food. People really like comfort food. It's not fancy. It's not trendy. It's just people like it. NARRATOR: Not only are
these potatoes popular, they also pack a
nutritional wallop. Every fresh potato contains
much of your daily allotment of nutrients, especially vitamin
C, iron, all of your Vitamin Bs, and potassium, to boot. Stuck on a desert island? You'd do OK with potatoes. But for all this good stuff,
it's the taste that counts. Maybe that's why the average
American consumes more than 140 pounds of potatoes each year. And we're not alone. Global potato consumption
has doubled since 1993. Today, China leads the
world's potato harvest, followed by India and Russia. America ranks only
fifth in total output. Add it all up, and the simple
spud is an international star. Potatoes are a very basic
staple in everyone's diet, because they can be
produced in many areas. They can be stored for
long periods of time, and provide a very
good base to any diet. And you can do many
things with them. NARRATOR: No doubt one
of the most popular is the potato chip. Americans consume 1.5 billion
pounds of chips every year. 18 million pounds go during
the Super Bowl alone. But not every chip
is created equal. We're the first
people to really think of potato chips
as something other than really the cheapest
possible ingredients you could get, and we think
elevated the lowly potato to its rightful status
as a gourmet potato chip. NARRATOR: Since it
was founded in 1978, Kettle Foods of Salem, Oregon
has produced more than 30 different potato chip flavors,
including spicy Thai, New York cheddar, and yogurt
& green onion. But no matter the
flavor, the process begins with local Oregon and
Washington state potatoes. As you can see, we use many
different sizes of potatoes. We're looking for
interesting looking potatoes, interesting looking potatoes. Different shapes make
great looking chips. NARRATOR: After an
inspection and wash, the potatoes are weighed and
separated into batches that fall into a high speed slicer. This is a slicer. This is what slices the
potatoes into potato chips. The potato comes
down here by gravity. This is spinning
around very fast. Centrifugal force
forces the potato out, and it slices the potatoes
at all different angles, all different sizes. NARRATOR: Unlike
most chip makers, Kettle doesn't remove
the peels before cooking. We think the peels add
flavor and also some nutrients. NARRATOR: Seconds after they're
sliced, the chips ever a fryer filled with safflower oil. The exact temperature
remains a trade secret. The steam you see coming
out of the chips, potatoes are about 75% water,
just like we are. And so when the slices
get fried, a lot of steam comes up at first. So that's one of the ways we
know the chips are getting done is when there's
not as much steam. NARRATOR: At each station,
workers move the conveyor from one fryer to the
other, allowing them to load one batch of
potatoes from the slicer while another cooks. Cooking by the batch
really makes a different type of potato chip. It's a little thicker. It's a little crunchier, a
little more homegrown taste. NARRATOR: At this
stage, all the chips taste the same, like
potato straight up. The twist comes after
they're cooled and inspected. So the chips are going
through the seasoning drum. That's what this
spinning drum is. The chips fall through here. As they fall through,
the seasoning comes out of a little tube and
is applied at a specific ratio. The chips go up here
onto the scales. These are 16 scales. The computer down below knows
how many chips are in each of these 16 scales, and
releases just the right amount to fill in this case 9 ounces. This is our New York
cheddar with herbs flavor. Perfect. NARRATOR: Today,
Kettle manufacturers 22 different flavors. Yet in the more than 30 years
since the company began, one thing has remained constant. The potato itself. We think potato is fantastic. Potatoes have
served us very well, and we think we've
helped potatoes, too. We think that all
potatoes really secretly yearn to become Kettle
brand potato chips. NARRATOR: Whether for everyday
snacking or a Thanksgiving feast, 90% of all potatoes
grown in the United States come in three basic varieties. The russet, often your standard
baked potato, the round whites, and the round reds. We're so used to them, it's hard
to imagine anything different. After all, a potato is
just a potato, right? Potatoes have
changed over the years. Right now this is the kind
of potato you'll often see in the market,
and it is well suited to be eaten
either as a baked potato or to make French
fries by slicing it. But this is a relatively
modern type of potato, with a relatively modern use. NARRATOR: Potatoes originated
in the Andes Mountains, in what is now modern
day Peru and Bolivia, where people have eaten them
for more than 8,000 years. Walk these fields even now,
and farmers cultivate hundreds of varieties. Thousands more thrive in
the wilderness, surrounded by legends and traditions. The ancient Incans, for example,
measured time by the rate it took to cook a potato. The potato didn't reach
Europe until the 16th century, on the boats of returning
conquistadors fresh from South American conquest. At first, it was more
curiosity than crop. I don't think that its
food potential was realized by the people that
brought it over. And it mostly resided
in botanical gardens. NARRATOR: When
attention was paid, people found the potatoes
malformed, even grotesque, fueling religious fears that
the potato was more the devil's work than from the hand of God. Nearly two centuries passed
before the potato became a staple of European diets. Today, of course, the potato
has serious street cred. In New York, for
example, local lore holds that no one gets elected
mayor without a visit to Yonah Shimmel's Potato Knishery. If you could take a bite out
of the Big Apple's history, it would taste like a knish. I don't think there's
anything else like the knish. It's not like French
fries or a baked potato. A knish is something that
I think is just a knish. There's no other
way to describe it. It's just a very delicious
flavorful kind of food. NARRATOR: A Shimmel knish
begins with cooked potatoes, hand-formed and
wrapped in dough, then baked in small batches. Along the way, spices,
meats, and vegetables can be added, just as
they've been for 100 years. From 1910 we
opened this store. In all time, 100 years, we're
making knishes the same way. Nothing changed. Nothing. NARRATOR: It's traditional,
protein-filled peasant food, with all the richness and flavor
of America's immigrant past. You can make
100 times knishes. You put spinach,
it's spinach knish. You mix with the cabbage,
it's cabbage knish. With vegetable, vegetable knish. You can mix potato
with everything. NARRATOR: Back in Los Angeles,
where the power lunch is a daily ritual, leading chefs
at acclaimed eateries like Mozza seek new ways to
serve the simple spud. Potatoes find their way into
our menu in a few categories. First of all, at the pizzeria,
one of our very popular pizzas is a potato and
Gorgonzola pizza. And it's absolutely delicious. NARRATOR: To gain a leg up
in this highly competitive restaurant scene, Nancy
Silverton and her head chef Matt Molina find a wide variety
of potatoes at the Santa Monica farmer's market, one of
the oldest in the country. To be able to have that
kind of conversation, for the farmer to be
able to say to you we're planting some
more varieties, what do you want, what do you use? You know, having that
exchange is so important, and obviously something
that you would never get at a supermarket. NARRATOR: Weiser Farms has
been in the potato business for nearly 30 years. What we do is, we
harvest them and then custom order size them. This is where we begin
talking to chefs, getting feedback from
customers, and it's really defined who we are. And we love growing all
these different varieties. As a farmer, a small
farmer trying to survive, you have to do
something different. NARRATOR: Using a potato variety
named Russian fingerling, the chefs at Mozza create one of
their most popular appetizers. Rather than having French
fries, because everybody loves French fries, right, you gotta
give them their French fries, we do a dish where we
cook the fingerlings in extra virgin olive oil and
butter and rosemary, salt, of course. And when they're fully
cooked, we smash them. We go ahead and just play
a little bit of pressure with the palm of our hand, and
we just want to compress it, but we don't want
to break the potato. We just want to
basically smash it, so you can see the contrast
of the flesh and the skin. And by smashing it, you get a
really crunchy and then creamy inside potato. NARRATOR: To the potatoes, the
chef adds fried garbanzo beans, the herbs rosemary
and sage, also fried, and a garlic mayonnaise. And there you have it,
the fried potatoes with ceci and herbs here at Mozza. NARRATOR: The full
recipes is included in the US Potato Board's
Year of the Potato cookbook. But if that wasn't enough
to whet your appetite, then here's a little something
to raise your spirits. Potato vodka, anyone? OK, let's harvest. Every fall, tens of thousands of
acres of American potato fields are upended. and over 20 million tons
of potatoes revealed. Idaho and Washington
state dominate the market, but potatoes grow in
every state in America. Here at Sterman
Masser Farms outside of Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania, they've been raising potatoes
for eight generations. We're growing 600
acres of potatoes, and we're harvesting
anywhere from 30,000 pounds to 40,000 pounds per acre,
depending on the variety. NARRATOR: That's 24
million pounds for anyone who's counting. The variety here is
superior white, a round, all purpose cooking potato. Every plant in the row will
produce six to eight potatoes. We're looking at a strip
of 108 rows behind us, and there about 10,000
pounds in each row. NARRATOR: Harvest is a
combination of digging then gathering the potatoes,
which grow five to six inches below ground. Pulled by a tractor, a basic
harvester uses rotating blades to separate any underground
vines, while a steel shovels scoops the potatoes
from the dirt. The harvester deposits them
in a row for later pickup. You'll see we're digging
four rows of potatoes. Then we have a machine that
will pick up those four rows, and it'll go through an air
separation system, where it'll pick up the potatoes
from the rock and clods and deposit them on the truck
that's driving alongside. NARRATOR: Once gathered, trucks
that carry upwards of 45,000 pounds return to the
main processing facility, where even unloading
is highly efficient. A hydraulic dumper can
dump roughly 45,000 pounds in 8 to 10 minutes. And we can do about 20
trailer loads per day, roughly 50,000 pounds per hour. NARRATOR: Workers remove
large debris by hand, then steer the load
into a water flume to separate even
the smallest rocks. If the rocks are heavier,
they sink to the bottom, they're transported out. Potatoes are floating
in the water. They travel around this rock
flume up to the conveyor here, and then
back to the washer. NARRATOR: A series of
brushes gives the potatoes a good, stiff cleaning, removing
any residual dirt on the skins. Once this dance is
complete, the potatoes are diverted, either to long
term storage, fresh table stock, or commercial packaging. Solanum tuberosum, the potato,
is actually a botanical relative of the tomato,
the eggplant, even tobacco, and the pepper, but technically
not the sweet potato. Go figure. Up to 85% of the
potato plant is edible, versus 50% of most
cereal grains like wheat. But don't munch on the
potato plant leaves. They can be poisonous. The potato is actually a stem. It's an underground stem. If you look at a
potato, the eyes are growing points on the step. NARRATOR: Think of the potato
as a large storage organ. From one of the potato
eyes, the primary stem arises in search of sunlight. Once it breaks the surface,
the plant generates new shoots and stems to store
its nutrients. After a dormancy period,
the tips of the stems swell up to form new potatoes. Cut a fresh potato
into four pieces, and you either have the
start of a meal or the seed necessary to begin
four new potato plants. These are Norwest potatoes. They'll have to have
a couple more weeks to be of adequate size,
but this is the seed piece. We plant pieces of basically
these potatoes chopped up. And from each of the eyes of
a potato, this plant grows. So each stock is growing out
of a single shoot from an eye, and this is the end result. NARRATOR: In decades past,
farmers planted, tended, and did much of their
harvest by hand. And it was nearly
always a family affair. In Maine, for example,
schoolchildren were released from classes every
fall to hand pick the potatoes. I started picking
potatoes at the age of five. I had two older sisters,
and there were four of us in the family. $0.25
a barrel, and a barrel is four big baskets. In fact, this is an example
right here of a barrel. So picking potatoes off the
ground, putting it in a basket, and putting it in
a barrel like this, and then you'd put
your ticket on, and that would be worth
$0.25 worth of work. NARRATOR: Today, not
even driving the tractors or harvesters is hands-on. Here at Green Thumb
Farms in Freiburg, Maine, the machinery literally steers
itself, using the latest GPS technology. The tractor works just like
an autopilot in an airplane. Identical. NARRATOR: Tiller-like computer
controlled wheels attached to the tractor guide
it across the terrain, using data sent from satellites. The operator
only takes control to bring the tractor around
beyond the 180 degree mark on the compass on his turn. When he comes back beyond 180
degrees from where he was, he basically pushes a
start or an enter mode, and the tractor knows where it
wants to go on its next track, lines up, and goes. It's hands-off. NARRATOR: Prior to GPS, farmers
cut their potato rows by eye, using a hedge or
tree line as a guide. Many were remarkably
accurate, but not perfect. Even the slightest
variation caused by terrain or simple human error
was amplified as more rows were added. GPS changed all that. The first year
we used it, we had a 10% gain in our
planted acreage, simply because we
were able to align our rows without
any wasted ground in between the passes of
our planter back and forth. That's significant. NARRATOR: The GPS system
also prevents farmers from accidentally steering their
tractors over their crop, what farmers call greening. I would dare to say we've
probably kicked 75 maybe even 80% of our greening
out of this crop. That's all product that now is
usable as opposed to unusable. NARRATOR: But technology can
only solve part of the equation when it comes to
running a family farm. Meaning innovation doesn't stop
at the potato field's edge. Our family has been
in the potato industry in some way or another for
five or six generations. So we always heard stories about
turning potatoes into vodka. Fast track that to
about five years ago, potato sales were down,
and my brother was saying it's hard to make a
living growing potatoes. What about doing potato vodka? So we did. NARRATOR: Fresh potatoes don't
always look the way you'd like. Known as culls, these
misfits are often destroyed. But at Cold River
Vodka, they're turned into award-winning spirits. We've had potatoes
that are 14 inches long, and that are almost
five inches thick. And they can't sell
those for table stock, and nobody wants
them in a restaurant. The first year we went
through about 800,000 pounds of potatoes, and all
of those were culls. This year, we're probably gonna
be a little bit over a million pounds. We do anywhere from 25
to 30,000 pounds a week. NARRATOR: The world's
most common vodkas are made with wheat and rye. At Cold River, it takes
15 pounds of potatoes to make one bottle of vodka. The first step? Mash more than 6,500
pounds of potatoes into a 1500 gallon soup. Potatoes are 81-85% water,
and the rest of it's starch and a few other things. We wanna take that starch, and
convert that starch to sugar. And we do that by mashing
them up and boiling them. We take those starch
molecules and break them down. NARRATOR: Yeast is added,
and the fermentation begins. Enzymes within the yeast quickly
consume the potato sugar, generating alcohol,
CO2, and heat. The potato soup is gonna
be in here for anywhere from 24 to 36 hours. Then we'll have what
we call potato wine. And we just call it potato
wine, because it has 8 to 9 and 1/2 percent alcohol. It's still the ugly old potato
milkshake that we start with, but now it has alcohol,
so it's what we're gonna make our vodka out of. NARRATOR: To separate the
alcohol from the solids, the wine now flows into the
copper distillation unit. When brought to a boil, distinct
elements within the wine turn to gas, rise within
the cooling tower, then condense into
separate liquids. Most prominent among
them is ethanol, vodka's primary ingredient. This is the soup. This is the first bit that
we put in the pot still. And this is after the second . distillation. This is our second distillant. This is about 9% alcohol, and
this is roughly 95% alcohol. NARRATOR: Cold River repeats
the distillation process three times to create a more
refined and pure ethanol. Then they blend it with filtered
water from the nearby Cold River Aquifer before bottling. It's not overly sweet. It's very, very subtle. There are some sugars
in the potato that remain through fermentation
and distillation, that give it that subtle sweetness. It's got a very
distinctive nose. It's got a lot of character. NARRATOR: And for that, as
well as the opportunities it creates, there's
reason to celebrate. Good going, you guys. - Cheers, Chris.
- Thank you. Cheers. NARRATOR: Of course,
more potatoes wind up in this
form than in vodka. But you have a
challenger, French fry. The mighty tot. but rarely is it as seductivec, as the French fry. I think even if
you're on a diet, you can't turn
down French fries. NARRATOR: Americans eat an
average of four servings of French fries a week. So if you plan to
be in this business, you'd better have a
lot of spuds on hand. And then one stores more
than Ore-Ida Potatoes in Ontario, Oregon. The place is gigantic. We're standing here in one
of our potato storage cellars, and this cellar covers
about one acre of ground, and is about 20 feet deep
stacked with potatoes. That's about 33 million
pounds of potatoes, which equates to about 10 days
worth of usage for our factory. NARRATOR: That's right, 33
million pounds in 10 days. Which means in a year-- We use over 1 billion
pounds of raw potatoes going through our factory. The 1 billion pounds of
potatoes that we have turns into about 640
to 700 million pounds of finished product
each year, which is spread across a variety
of different types of cuts that we make here in the plant. NARRATOR: Stroll any frozen
food aisle and Ore-Ida products are there, from hash
browns to mashed potatoes, to their number one
seller, French fries. Ore-Ida sells about 500
million pounds of French fries a year. NARRATOR: The trick? The look and flavor
can't waiver. After all, we take our
French fries seriously. To make a consistent
fry, any manufacturer who begins with uniform
sized and shaped potatoes that are sliced into
standard lengths and forms. Each day, tens of
thousands of potatoes enter a waterline that flows
rapidly through a long tube. Traveling now at
30 miles per hour, the potato surges through
an iron mesh as sharp as ninja steel. What was once whole is now
sliced into more than 20 perfect fries. But hidden within
this Cadillac process is the genesis of another
Cinderella story, the tater tot, born from the
scraps and orphans that the French fry
process leaves behind. When we make
French fries, we're left with product we call shorts
and slivers, which are not suitable for grade in
regular French fries. This in the early days
was being thrown away, and it was quite a waste, so
people put their heads together and came up with this idea of
cutting this up into smaller pieces and forming it
into a cylindrical shape and frying it. Thus tater tots were born. NARRATOR: Transforming that
potato material into everyone's favorite tot is
fairly spudtacular. This production line runs
at 15 to 20,000 pounds of tots per hour. So after a quick blanch,
these slivers and misfits are ready to be formed. Behind me the
tater tot material is combined with
various dry ingredients, picked up, and then inserted
into a rotating former drum. NARRATOR: The potato mixture
presses against the rotating drum, and fills into small,
barrel-shaped openings as the drum spins. With the mixture now in the
classic tater tot shape, pistons inside the drum
force the tots outward, and onto the next
step in the process. Those tater tots are then
put through the fryer behind me and then on into the freezer. NARRATOR: The process moves like
clockwork, fast and efficient. Now freshly fried, the tots
leap from the oil into a freezer set at minus 20
degrees Fahrenheit. Then they're
packaged and shipped. One of our leading sales
products is tater tots, and we sell about 3.6
billion tater tots per year. If you put all those
tater tots end to end, they would actually circle
the globe roughly three times. NARRATOR: But not
all potato products are formed on such
a grand scale, and sometimes variety
truly is the spice of life. This is the variety all blue. It's also known
as purple marker. And it's a beautiful plant. There's a good sized one. This is one of our
latest varieties. Very dark blue skin. It's got a beautiful
purple flesh. Clean them off, rub some
olive oil on the skin, put them on a cookie sheet. They cook in 10 or 15 minutes,
and then have some sour cream or butter, and you've got a
meal in itself right there. NARRATOR: Here at Wood Prairie
Farms in Aroostook County, Maine, Jim and
Megan Gerritsen run one of the leading specialty
potato farms in the country. They produce 25 varieties of
organically grown potatoes. And they come in many colors,
textures, and flavors. This is cranberry red. It's a low density potato. It's pink inside, and it's got a
real following in New York City among some chefs that really
like this one for texture and flavor. NARRATOR: But it's not
just a matter of taste. New research suggests real
health benefits as well. There's a likely correlation
between the brighter the color, the more intense the color like
these purples and the higher amount of antioxidants and
some of the other health-giving compounds in potatoes. As a rule of thumb, the
brighter colored potatoes seem to have more
nutrient density. NARRATOR: Somewhere in the
genetic codes of the world's many potato varieties
is the key to stopping a centuries old
killer, late blight. I have seen personally fields
go down in three or four days. All it takes is the
presence of the disease and the right climate
and susceptibility of the potato, bam. NARRATOR: Late blight is a
merciless airborne fungus. In the 1840s, it ignited
the Irish potato famine that left more than a million dead. It continues to destroy nearly
20% of the world's potato crop every year. This year we happened
to be dealing with it. It's everywhere. And what happens is, it'll
infect the potato leaves, then it'll infect the stocks, then
it'll move on into the tubers. Once it infects the tubers,
they can rot in storage, and they can rot
right in the ground. Basically, it can
annihilate your entire crop. NARRATOR: For now, only
diligence, chemical fungicides, and a little luck help farmers
to battle late blight's potentially devastating
consequences. But there is reason for hope. Here at the United
States Department of Agriculture's potato research
center in Prosser, Washington, scientists like Chuck Brown
cross and grow different potato varieties in search
of disease resistance. Pollen from potentially
blight-free potato plants collected around the world
is wed to the genetic codes of more commercial yet
vulnerable varieties. It's a genetic labyrinth, and
the project will take years, but progress has been made. We had a collaborative
research project with a breeding
program in Poland. And after a number of years,
the work that they did resulted in a set of 10
clones that were highly late blight resistant. And they sent them
to us, and we're maintaining these in vitro,
and we use them in crossing. NARRATOR: Had this rare seedling
been the primary variety planted throughout
Ireland in 1845, there would have been no famine. And if it can be crossed with
more commercial varieties in the future, then the
threat of late blight may finally be over. Got a guess on how to hide 20
million pounds of potatoes? Start by checking your freezer. Here's a riddle. How do you get 300 pounds of
potatoes into a 50 pound bag? The answer? Dehydration. The process that reduces the
water content in fresh potatoes and allows you to turn them
into potato flakes and flour. The industry calls it dehy,
and you may recognize it as instant mashed potatoes. But did you know it's
also in your ice cream, your soup, even
your jelly beans? And those perfectly formed
chips that come in a can? They're dehy, too. Because when you suck the water
out of potatoes, what's left can be made into any shape you
want, including a world record setter. No one does this better than
the folks at Keystone Potato Products in Hegins,
Pennsylvania. They operate one of the most
advanced potato dehydration systems in the world, capable
of producing more than 20 million pounds of
dehydrated potatoes a year. And here's the thing. The entire production line
is completely automated. This is one of two control
panels in the processing room. This entire line is automated
from touchscreen panels. In this room, we only have
two people running the line. So from this control panel,
just one of two control panels, we can control everything
that happens in this room. NARRATOR: Almost
like a giant robot, the Keystone system processes
more than 18,000 pounds of potatoes an hour. It begins with the peel. The first step in
the dehydration process is to actually remove
the peel from the potato. And we do that with steam. NARRATOR: A steam peeler
subjects each batch of potatoes to high pressure steam for 10 to
20 seconds, loosening the peel. Brushes then scrub the peel
off before a powerful slicer cuts the potato into
half inch slices. These slices are briefly
heated, then rapidly cooled in a cold water immersion. Our objective here
is to get the potatoes from 165 degrees down to 65
degrees as quickly as possible. And it's almost like a heat
treatment process for metal, where we are affecting
the potato cells and strengthening them and
preventing them from bursting when they proceed to
the next step, which is the cooking process. NARRATOR: The potatoes cook
for less than half an hour. And that's when
things get sticky. After the cooker,
they make their way to one of two drying drums,
which takes that mash product now that you see, and that
product adheres to that drum. And on the other
side, the dry product then comes off in the form of
potato flake or sheets of-- almost looks like
sheets of paper. NARRATOR: Pressure
combined with heat from within the large drums
forces the potatoes to lose nearly all their moisture. The mashed product comes onto
the drum at anywhere between 80 and 90% moisture. Our objective when
it leaves the drum is to have the moisture level
anywhere between 6% and 8%. NARRATOR: Those paper thin
sheets are run over a shaker table, and then through
an optical sorter to remove even the
smallest defects. After the optical
sorter, the product goes into a grinder,
a hammer mill, where we size the product,
convey it pneumatically into the silo. That feeds the bagger. The bags are filled to
roughly 40 pounds each. We take those bags, we seal
them with a heat sealer, put them through
a metal detector, and then stack them on the bags,
and they're ready to go out to the customer. NARRATOR: Only at the
very end do human hands play a part in this highly
automated process, which can customize the flake or
flour to meet any grade required by the customer. Remarkably little of the fresh
potato's nutritional value is lost along the way. But if you think
that's news, consider that dehydrating potatoes
dates back thousands of years. ancient South Americans
stepped on potatoes, crushing the water from them. The remains were called chu o,
and were stored for years as a hedge against famine. Sadly, famine, hunger, and
malnutrition remain a challenge even today. Fortunately, the
very characteristics that make dehy so valuable
in the commercial marketplace also make it extremely desirable
for relief organizations, like the San Diego-based
charity, Project Concern International. They provide a high caloric
intake, small amount of food that really provide high
nutritional value to children. In this particular program,
the US Potato Board provided dehydrated potatoes. And one of the benefits to that
particular commodity or source of food over others
is its lightweight, because there's
transportation costs that are related to sending the
food from the United States overseas. NARRATOR: Each year,
Project Concern and other international AID
efforts distribute more than 10 million pounds of
dehydrated potatoes to those in need, a vital
role for this humble tuber. Meanwhile, be it flake or flour,
the potato can hold its own. But what about its firepower? Here's a spud that can
really pack a punch. Oh, nailed it. or Legos, or even Barbie sly was on the air, there was Mr.
Potato Head, the first child's toy ever advertised on TV. Timing is everything in showbiz. And in 1952, Potato Head became
the toy industry's first media hit. Stick in eyes, then ears. You can make the
funniest-looking people in the whole world. NARRATOR: In his
first incarnation, Mr. Potato head required
an actual potato. In 1964 came the
plastic version. Since then, Mr. Potato
Head has played many roles, but that's kid stuff. If you're really interested
in potato toys for adults, meet the Diktater. We are ready. NARRATOR: Perhaps there
are more productive ways to spend a Sunday afternoon than
to launch potatoes from a gun. But for Joe Bell and
Jason Lilly, fewer is fun. We nailed it. NARRATOR: No one knows who
first invented the potato gun. See that, JB? Yes, I did. NARRATOR: But whenever
you mix ordinary guys, a splash of boredom, and a
garage full of used household products-- Let's see if we can
hit that motorhome-- NARRATOR: The results
can be explosive. Oh, oh, oh, oh,
oh, oh, no, oh, no! Oh, geez! [laughter] NARRATOR: Basic
potato gun technology begins with PVC piping, the
kind used in household plumbing. All the parts can be purchased
from your local hardware store to build these Suckers
basically, the components are a combustion chamber, an
igniter, and then the barrel. NARRATOR: Builders sharpen
one end of the pipe to serve as a barrel knife,
shaving off excess potato as it's stuffed into the gun. This creates a tight seal. Next, the propellant. We like to use
hairspray and deodorant. Especially deodorant
on days like this. NARRATOR: Once sealed in the
small end of the chamber, a mere spark from a barbecue
lighter creates an explosion. Pressure builds rapidly
behind the wedged potato and forces it down
the barrel and out. Boom. So that's the basics. But where is the
gunner who doesn't crave to customize his potato
shooter, including a laser sight? There's a level on it, and
this little laser pointer, and you get it shooting
right down the barrel. And on evenings, you
can see, you just point the dot at your target,
and it's pretty accurate. NARRATOR: But what if
you want your potato to take a longer trip? What if you replace
deodorant with rocket fuel? Put yourself in the
shoes of a NASA scientist planning a manned trip to Mars. It's a journey that
will take years. Among the algorithms
and telemetries is a simple yet nagging problem. How do you feed your astronauts? On long term
spaceflights, it's impossible to pack
enough freeze dried meals and carry all of that weight for
the long term of that endeavor. So it's important to grow the
food that the crew will need. Makes sense. But how would you do that? Where's the dirt? And what do you grow? In this chamber, we have some
mini-tuber potatoes that were planted in here
about a week ago. And you can really
see how much growth we've got during that time. You can see the formation
of the stems, the roots. Very nice development
in one week's time. NARRATOR: In 1995, the potato
was the first food ever grown in orbit, using a technology
called aeroponics. Unlike hydroponics,
which submerges a portion of the plant in
water, aeroponics concentrates a small
mist of nutrients onto the plant suspended in air. The aeroponic spray or mist
is delivered to the plants on a timed interval. The interval delivers a three
second spray that just, pshh, just like that, and it's over. And that is enough to coat
the plant, stem, and the root system. NARRATOR: The plant doesn't
have to fight through layers of dirt, enhancing rapid growth. The plants being
suspended in air, they're able to grow much faster
and get twice or three times the rate of growth here that
you would in a greenhouse. NARRATOR: The results
are remarkable. Aeroponically grown
potatoes requires 60% less water, 90% less fertilizers
like nitrogen, and 100% less pesticides. For now, aeroponics
remains focused on research and small commercial ventures. No one suggests that it will
replace the traditional farm, at least not on our planet. But it does make you think,
colorful, nutritious, beloved, maybe the humble spud isn't
always just a side dish. Sometimes it can be a star.
