Not even animal feed, the thing is when they introduced potatoes to farmers in France the farmers did what they usually do with the leaves of root vegetables: they gave it to their animals.

Except the potato leaves are poisonous, so after seeing that this unknown vegetable was killing their animals or making them sick they of course got rid of it and did not want to take risks with the roots themselves.

Now, I don’t know if it’s a legend or not but what Parmentier did to make farmers interested again is that he asked for a field of potato to be planted around Versailles and have it being guarded day and night. When the potatoes where ready the guards would start to be less careful and leaves the field unatendded for some period that left the opportunity for peasants to grab this delicious crop that the king was protecting.