Hannah Gardner

Special for USA TODAY

YANQING, China — In a lab 50 miles north of Beijing, technicians propagate potato plants by slicing the leaves off the tiny sprouts and dropping the cuttings into jars of growth jelly. Within a few weeks each snippet should send up a shoot of its own.

“It’s the fastest way to produce lots of healthy potato seeds,” said Li Huaming, a project manager at Xisen Potato Group, China’s largest potato developer.

And producing lots of potato seeds is critical: This country of noodle and rice lovers for thousands of years has set a goal to make the humble spud a national staple by 2020.

The Communist-led government says such a jarring culinary change is necessary to prevent land and water shortages from worsening, and to make sure the country can feed itself as the population of 1.3 billion grows.

Pound for pound, the potato requires 30% less water than China’s traditional staples of rice, wheat and maize. And it provides more calories and vitamins per acre.

Land dedicated to potato crops is being doubled, as the government encourages people to consume the tuber in large amounts.

“Hunger breeds discontentment. … The development of the potato industry and the consumption of potatoes as a staple food is an important step in China’s agricultural development,” Yu Xinrong, vice minister of agriculture, said in a keynote speech last summer.

Increasing the production of potatoes may be the easy task. The real challenge will be getting the Chinese to eat them.

China already is the world's largest potato producer, but about half of the 95 million tons it grows every year is exported or fed to livestock. By contrast, Americans eat 80% of what is grown domestically.

Chinese shun potatoes, aside from French fries, which are popular in Western fast food restaurants. Potatoes didn't arrive here until Dutch traders brought them in the mid-1600s, and they quickly became associated with poverty and food shortages, something many Chinese experienced before the economy took off after economic reforms during the 1980s. Back then, eating rice or noodles instead of potatoes was considered a luxury.

“I don’t care if I never eat another potato in my life,” said Cai Chunrong, 46, a vegetable vendor from China’s central Hubei province. “I ate too many as kid,” she added, as she slurped from a bowl of wheat noodles.

Another factor working against the spud: It's thought of as a vegetable more than as a staple, so it is chopped and stir-fried in cooking, much like cabbage, and served with rice. That combination doesn’t win a lot of fans, so it's mostly found in institutional canteens, where workers and students need to fill up for very little money.

“The potato isn’t really used in high-end cooking. It’s considered peasant food,” said Gu Weijian, a chef at one of Beijing's better restaurants.

By contrast, rice and noodles are cherished in Chinese culture. Rice is a symbol of civilization, and noodles stand for longevity.

So how will the government get people to eat potatoes again? The answer seems to be combination of propaganda, price incentives and potato versions of food already used as staples.

Several companies are adding potato powder to bread. After several years of trials, Xisen Potato Group and another firm, Haileda, have created hybrid steamed buns from potato powder and wheat flour.

Haileda produced more than 12,000 buns before finding the perfect mixture. “They kept splitting or falling apart,” said Chen Baohua, the company’s production director, according to the Beijing Times.

Other companies are going a different route, making Western dishes with butter and cheese to popularize the spud.

Ma Dafei, a Beijing entrepreneur, hopes to roll out a chain of eateries this year that serve baked and mashed potatoes, as well as potato risotto. He expects the state-run media to cover his new business and drum up publicity.

“After all, we want the same thing," he said. "For people to eat more potatoes.”