The potato crop of the United States exceeds 100 million bushels, nearly all of which are consumed in the country; the average exports of the last eight years not having exceeded 160,000 bushels per annum.
According to the census returns of 1840, the quantity of potatoes of all sorts raised in the Union, was 108,298,060 bushels; of 1850, 104,055,989 bushels, of which 38,259,196 bushels were sweet potatoes.
Last year (1852) there was under cultivation with potatoes in Canada, the following extent of land:—
| Acres. | Bushels. | ||
| Upper Canada | 77,672 | Produce | 498,747 |
| Lower Canada | 73,244 | Produce | 456,111 |
About 782,008 cwts. of potatoes are annually exported from the Canary Islands. In Prussia, 153 million hectolitres of potatoes were raised in 1849. In 1840 Van Diemen's Land produced 15,000 tons of potatoes, on about 5,000 acres of land.
The potato is not yet an article of so much importance in France, as in England or the Low Countries, but within the last twenty years its cultivation has increased very rapidly. It is mostly grown where corn is the least cultivated. The quantity raised in 1818, was 29,231,867 hectolitres, which had increased in 1835 to 71,982,814 hectolitres. About 2,000,000 hectolitres of chesnuts are also annually consumed in France, a portion of the rural population in some of the Central and Southern Departments living almost entirely on them for half the year.
In Peru dried potatoes are thus prepared:—Small potatoes are boiled, peeled, and then dried in the sun, but the best are those dried by the severe frosts on the mountains. In the Cordilleras they are covered with ice, until they assume a horny appearance. Powdered, it is called chimo. They will keep for any length of time, and when used required to be bruised and soaked. If introduced as a vegetable substance in long sea voyages, the potato thus dried would be found wholesome and nourishing. A large and profitable business is now carried on, in what is called "preserved potatoes," for ships' use, prepared by Messrs. Edwards and Co., which are found exceedingly useful in the Royal Navy, in emigrant ships, for troops and other services, from their portability, nutritious properties, and being uninjured by climate.
Few persons are probably aware of the quantity of potatoes used in England, America and the Continent, in the manufacture of starch, arrowroot, and tapioca, &c., A starch manufactory in Mercer, Maine, United States, grinds from 16,000 to 24,000 bushels annually of potatoes, and makes 140,000 to 240,000 lbs. of starch, which finds a ready market at Boston, at four dollars the hundred pounds. The New England manufacturers prefer it to Poland starch. Another starch manufacturer, in Hampden, America, consumes 2,500 bushels per day. In a single district in Bavaria, in Germany, 400,000 lbs. of sago and starch are manufactured from potatoes; 100 lbs. of potatoes are said to yield 12 lbs. of starch. From experiments made in America, with three varieties of potatoes, the long reds, Philadelphia, and pink-eyes, it was found that the former yielded the most starch, viz., about 6 lbs. to the bushel. A bushel of potatoes weighs about 64 lbs. The following table from Accum, gives the rate of starch and component parts per cent. in different varieties:—
| Sort. | Fibrine. | Starch. | Vegetable Albumen. | Gum. | Acids and Salts. | Water. |
| Red potatoes | 7.0 | 15.0 | 1.4 | 4.1 | 5.1 | 75.0 |
| Ditto germinated | 6.8 | 12.2 | 1.3 | 3.7 | .. | 73.0 |
| Potato sprouts | 2.8 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 3.3 | .. | 93.0 |
| Kidney potatoes | 8.8 | 9.1 | 0.8 | .. | .. | 81.3 |
| Large red potatoes | 6.0 | 12.9 | 0.7 | .. | .. | 78.0 |
| Sweet potatoes | 8.2 | 15.1 | 0.8 | .. | .. | 74.3 |
| Potato of Peru | 5.2 | 15.0 | 1.9 | 1.9 | 76.0 | |
| Ditto of England | 6.8 | 12.9 | 1.1 | 1.7 | 77.5 | |
| Onion potato | 8.4 | 18.7 | 0.9 | 1.7 | 70.3 | |
| Voigtland | 7.1 | 15.4 | 1.2 | 2.0 | 74.3 | |
| Cultivated in the environs of Paris | 6.8 | 13.3 | 0.9 | 3.3 | 1.4 | 73.1 |
The first six varieties were analysed by Einhoff, the next four by Lamped, and the last named by Henry.