Potatoes: carbon footprint per kg

Potatoes are among the lowest-carbon foods Agribalyse publishes — the live figure is below. They grow well in temperate climates without heated greenhouses, yield heavily per hectare, and go from field to shop with little processing, which leaves very little for a footprint to accumulate.

The number to watch is what happens after you buy them. Agribalyse lists boiled, baked, fried and crisped potatoes separately, and every cooked form sits above the raw one — chips and crisps at roughly double it. The cooking, not the farming, is where a potato's footprint grows, and the dishes that add dairy or mayonnaise climb furthest of all.

Worked example

2.5 kg of peeled potatoes — about a 3 kg sack: 2.5 × 0.788 = 2 kgCO2e.

Measure your own with the free food calculator.

Frequently asked questions

Are chips and crisps much worse than plain potatoes?

They roughly double it in Agribalyse — the added oil and the industrial frying energy account for the difference. Potato salad, which is mostly mayonnaise, is the one that multiplies rather than doubles.

How do potatoes compare with rice as a staple?

Potatoes are considerably lower in the same database. Rice's flooded-paddy methane has no equivalent in potato farming.

Related factors

• Rice
• Bread
• Tomatoes