Ireland's Potato Famine

A great famine occurred in Ireland from around 1845 to about 1852 and devastated the country. Approximately one million people died of starvation or diseases caused by this famine, and about one million more people emigrated Ireland and moved to other countries to try to find a better life. One country that a lot of people moved to is the United States. Numerous people immigrated to the U.S. and created settlements all around the country. To provide for themselves in these settlements, most of the people farmed the land because that was what they knew how to do. The primary cause of this famine was a fungus-like protist called Phytophtera infestans that attacked Ireland’s potato crop, causing them to rot. Unfortunately, the people of Ireland

Over half of Ireland’s people depended on potatoes for food and a source of income. Because potatoes are very healthy food, people could live off of them and not much else. They are rich in potassium, even higher than bananas, vitamin B6, copper, vitamin C, and other essential nutrients that humans need. Each year, a family with four children would eat around five tons of potatoes and would give the leftovers to chickens and other farm animals. “Irish peasants subsisted on a diet consisting largely of potatoes, since a farmer could grow triple the amount of potatoes as grain on the same plot of land (Mintz & McNeil, 2013).” A family could be supported for a year just off of one acre of potatoes because about 12 tons of potatoes could be harvested from one acre of fertilized land. When the potato crop was unsuccessful, countless people had no food to eat and were left without something to sell to make money. Many farmers were forced out of their homes by landlords. People then had to try to make shelters, sometimes just a hole in the ground with an inadequate roof, but these were frequently overcrowded. This large concentration of people in such a small area, combined with malnutrition, caused diseases like typhus, cholera, scurvy, and dysentery to spread rapidly. With limited medicine, medical knowledge, and money, these diseases were often

A blight is a plant disease, especially one caused by a fungus. If the conditions are cold and damp, they release spores that get into the plant. Shortly after farmers would dig up the potatoes, they would begin to decay and rot. These were rotten potatoes were inedible and were not able to help feed the hungry Irish people. In the first year of the famine, around one third of the potato crop was lost. About three fourths of the potato crop was lost in both of the next two years. Scientists discovered that the same potato blight that had hit Ireland also hit Canada in 1844 and the United States of America in 1843 and 1844. “It is thought that the disease travelled to Europe on trade ships and spread to England and finally to Ireland, striking the south-east first (Abbot,