Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations - Kootenay Local Agricultural Society

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A potato blight that arrived from America in 1844–45 showed just how
insecure food production had become. When Phytophthora infestans wiped
out the Irish potato harvest in the summer of 1845 and the next year’s crop
failed too, it left the poor—who could not afford to buy food at market rates
from the indifferent British government—with literally nothing to eat.
Completely dependent on potatoes, the Irish population crashed. About a
million people died from starvation or associated diseases. Another million
emigrated during the famine. Three million more left the country over the
next fifty years, many bound for America. By 1900 the population of Ireland
was a little more than half of what it had been in the 1840s. Why had
the Irish become so dependent on a single crop, particularly one introduced
from South America only a century before?
At first glance the answer appears to support Malthus. Between 1500 and
1846 the Irish population increased tenfold to eight and a half million. As
the population grew, the average land holding dwindled to about 0.2
hectares (half an acre), enough to feed a family only by growing potatoes.
By 1840 half the population ate little besides potatoes. More than a century
of intensive potato cultivation on nearly all the available land had reduced
the Irish to living on the verge of starvation in good years. But a closer look
at this story reveals more than a simple tale of population outpacing the
ability to grow potatoes.
The potato grew in importance as a staple while Irish agriculture increasingly
exported everything else to Britain and its Caribbean colonies. In
1649 Oliver Cromwell had led an invasion to carve Ireland into plantations
to pay off with land the speculators who bankrolled Parliament in the English
Civil War. Ireland’s new landlords saw lucrative opportunities provisioning
Caribbean sugar and tobacco plantations. Later, increasing demand
for food in Britain’s industrializing cities directed Irish exports to
closer markets. In 1760 hardly any Irish beef went to Britain. By 1800 four
out of five Irish cows sent to market ended up on British tables. The
growth of Britain’s urban population created substantial demand for food
Irish landlords were happy to supply. Even after the official union of Ireland
and England in 1801, Ireland was run as an agricultural colony.
The potato increasingly fed rural Ireland as land was diverted to raise
exports. In order to devote the best land to commercial crops, landlords
pushed peasants onto marginal lands where they could grow little other
than potatoes. Adam Smith advocated the potato as a means to improve
landlords’ profits in The Wealth of Nations because tenants could survive on
smaller plots if they grew nothing but potatoes. By 1805 the Irish ate little
let them eat colonies