Canada

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.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Rob Diether, 70, specializes in growing potatoes at the Horse Lake Community Farm Co-Op, located 115 kilometres north of Kamloops.

"'Enclosed: Find $2 to cover expenses for some of your great nurturing efforts and perseverance in dealing with government agricultural departments,'" Diether says, reading out from a stack of dozens of letters.

"The main idea is … to preserve this unique piece of farmland and see that it does remain in farm production," he told CBC News.

He added the Cariboo potato was also sensitive to sunlight, which would make the spuds go green if they were sitting on a supermarket shelf for long.

The farmer has been working in the fields since the mid-'70s, when he joined the Community Enhancement and Economic Development Society (CEEDS), which he describes as a "back to the land agricultural commune."

Since then, CEEDS, which helped get the Horse Lake co-op started in 2006, has grown a veritable bounty of Cariboo potatoes from those first four seeds.

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