Dhaka, Dec. 29 -- Yet agri experts and supply chain players say the problem has little to do with farmers, or even with production. Instead, it reflects how potatoes are treated in policy and planning.

Unlike many other countries, Bangladesh largely views the crop as just another vegetable eaten with rice, not as a basic industrial raw material.

That distinction matters. When production overshoots domestic demand, prices collapse. Farmers absorb the losses, while the economy misses out on value addition that could stabilise incomes and absorb surplus output.

Bangladesh is the world's seventh-largest potato producer. Still, it remains far behind global peers in industrial use of the tuber.

In China, about 15 percent of potato output go...