Template:Did you know nominations/Potato production in China


 * The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as |this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Yoninah (talk) 22:37, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Potato Production in China

 * ... that China is the world's largest producer of potatoes?
 * Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Betty Knox

Created by Kingoflettuce (talk). Self-nominated at 08:44, 27 May 2018 (UTC).


 * Symbol question.svg The article was, the prose of the article is exactly 4,122 characters long, and the nominator's QPQ gets the green light from me. It is far from the most impressive article I've read, but it does use what little citations it has effectively. A third party, however, might potentially raise the red flag on possible close paragraphing issues. My personal issue is with the hook itself. It is an incredible hook, and easily an interesting hook to practically all of Wikipedia's users, as most would know what China and potatoes are, and would easily be entertained by this factoid. The tragedy of it, however, is that the claim of China being the world's largest producer of potatoes does not seem to be explicitly verified. The following passage in which this claim appears in the article is cites this page from the Food and Agriculture Organization as its source.
 * "The total production of potatoes in China was over 70,000,000 hectares (170,000,000 acres), or more than 22 percent of the global potato production, making China the largest potato producer in the world. However, the average yield of potatoes in China was 14.35 tons/ha, compared to the global mean of 16.74 tons/ha."
 * While the FAO page does remark that "the total production of potatoes in China was over 70 million tons and it accounts for 22.41 percent of the global potato production" and "the average yield of potatoes in China was 14.35 tons/ha, which was lower than the world average yield of 16.74 tons/ha", it does not explicitly state that China is the largest producer of potatoes in the world. I've read through the entire page, and even used Firefox's word search function in case I had missed anything. Sure enough, even after searching for key words such as "world", "largest", "biggest", "potato", "producer", ect., no words resembling the claim showed up. I'd ask to please verify the claim with a source that explicitly states that China is the largest producer of potatoes in the world. As a P.S. I'd also recommend wikilinking China in the hook. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk &middot;&#32;articles &middot;&#32;reviews) 17:06, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I was unaware of any potato cultivation in China! Panda Express, a place I frequent, has only had 1 potato entree and for a brief period during the entire time I've been patronizing the chain. – Lionel(talk) 10:26, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * You are right, Philip, sorry for the slip-up: must have read the biggest producer fact elsewhere. Have added a bunch of citations (one from 2006 to corroborate with the FAO's 2006 stats) to the relevant line in the article, and incidentally a separate FAO page acknowledges this explicitly . As for "close paraphrasing", well it's hard to be imaginative with stats. Hope that won't be a glaring issue. Cheers, Kingoflettuce (talk) 13:32, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * @Lionelt, China grows everything... Kingoflettuce (talk) 13:32, 31 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Symbol confirmed.svg I am now content with the  in the article that do indeed explicitly state that China is the world's largest producer of potatoes. My note of close paragraphing is merely just a suggestion in which others may have a problem with, but I personally don't. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk &middot;&#32;articles &middot;&#32;reviews) 21:58, 31 May 2018 (UTC)