The treacherous gift: How agricultural specialization turned the potato into an agent of catastrophe

“ The basis of our national wealth is agriculture; the real substance of the nation is drawn from the earth. This arises from the great and extensive territory which we possess, thinly settled, low in price, of an excellent soil, capable, from its fertility and variety of climes, of affording produce of every kind, in the greatest abundance. The surplus of all is wanted in other countries, where nature has been less [Pg 493] bountiful; and it must be a great while before the labor of our citizens can be diverted extensively into other channels—I mean manufactures. ”

“ Whenever the greed for a money crop unbalances the wisdom of husbandry, the money crop is a curse. When 110it stimulates the general economy of the farm, it is the profiting of farming. In an unprosperous strip of Carolina, when asked the cause of their poverty, the people say, “Tobacco—for it is our only crop.” In Lancaster, Pa., the richest American county by the census, when asked the cause of their prosperity, they say, “Tobacco—for it is the golden crown of a diversified agriculture.” The soil that produces cotton invites the grains and grasses, the orchard and the vine. ”

“ So humble a vegetable as the potato has gained its way into all lands of the more civilized peoples almost solely because it has a habit of storing away, in large underground stems, a vast amount of starch. Let this provident tendency disappear in this plant for a single season, and the crop growers would discard it from their list of remunerative plants, while millions of people would turn with dismay to some other source of a daily supply of starch. ”

“ The fundamental principle of the multiplication of all animals, and consequently of man, is generation; the next is food: generation gives existence, food preserves it. Did the earth produce of itself the proper nourishment for man, with unlimited abundance, we should find no occasion to labour in order to procure it. Now in all countries found inhabited, as in those which have been found desolate, if the state of animals be inquired into, the number of them will be found in proportion to the quantity of food produced by the earth, regularly throughout the year, for their subsistence. ”

“ Every two or three years from 1821 to the great blight of '45 and '46, a failure of some kind, more or less extensive, occurred to the potato crop, not merely in Ireland, but in almost every country in which it was cultivated to any considerable extent. Reviewing, then, the history of this famous root for over a period of one hundred years, we find, that although it produces from a given acreage more human food than any other crop, it is yet a most treacherous and perishable one ”

“ It is now necessary to revert to that terrible page of Irish history, the famine, which culminated in what is still known as 'the black forty-seven.'
I have often been asked, 'How is it that Ireland could formerly support a population of eight millions as compared with only five now?'
The answer is simple: Eight millions could still exist if the potato crop were a certainty, and if the people were now content to exist as they did then. But to the then existing population—living at best in a light-hearted and hopeful, hand-to-mouth contentment—there was a terrible awakening. ”

“ The name given to James I’s Scottish subjects who were born after his accession to the English throne. The question arose as to whether they were aliens in England, and a legal decision was given to the effect that they were not aliens.
Potato Famine.
The failure of the potato crop in Ireland in 1847 is so called. It caused terrible distress, notwithstanding all the efforts made to relieve the sufferers, and thousands in consequence emigrated to America. Its effects on population, land tenure and other Irish questions have been very far-reaching. ”

“ What this change in the nature of a single kind of plant would mean to the human race words can not describe. If the famine in Ireland of 1845 and some later years, induced by a rot in the potato, is any index, the misery would be something worse than we should care to even dream of. When there is a shortage of starch in India, a distress follows that is felt through the bonds of sympathy, if in no other way, the whole world round. Let rice fail to mature its grain, Fig. 2.—Starch Granules of Corn. ”

“ When the potato failed, as it often did, came famine, with disease in its train. Want and misery were in every face, the roads were spread with dead and dying, there was sometimes none to bear the dead to the grave, and they were buried in the fields and ditches where they perished. ”

“ The rapid decrease in the population of Ireland from 8,300,000 to 4,600,000 in fifty years is ascribed by Dr. Grimshaw, registrar general, to three causes: the frequent failure of the potato crop; the emigration stimulated by the high wages in America and the low wages at home; and the lack of manufacturing industries, the result of which is that when the crops fail the people become destitute and have to leave the country. Notwithstanding the decrease in the population, the registrar general believes that the country has gained in wealth. ”

“ At the North, some farmers put in nothing but wheat; others, nothing but corn. One relies on the hay crop; another makes or loses a year’s profits on cattle. In each case, if the staple raised happens to hit, in every respect profits roll in like a flood. But such operations leave no margin for those casualties, and annual changes, which are inevitable.
Ireland, relying upon the potato as a support for a large mass of its poverty-stricken people, is visited with famine if this crop is shaken. The failure of the grain crop, in England, strikes panic into the whole nation. ”

“ But every such industry is liable to grave fluctuations, and the most important—the provision industries—to the gravest and the suddenest. They are dependent on the casualties of the seasons. A single bad harvest diffused over the world, a succession of two or three bad harvests, even in England only, will raise the price of corn exceedingly, and will keep it high. And a great and protracted rise in the price of corn will at once destroy all the real part of the unusual prosperity of previous good times. ”

“ This was written towards the end of April, and at that time the Government had not for a month heard a syllable from him on the agitated questions of tithes, magistracy, and police. The state of Ireland, indeed, became every day more perplexing and alarming. A revolutionary spirit was abroad, and all other social evils were aggravated by famine, which prevailed in extensive districts in the south and west. The potato crop, always precarious, was then almost a total failure in many counties, and left the dense population, whose existence depended upon it, totally destitute. ”

“ The cultivation of oats as a food crop had been universal before the introduction of the potato, but oats furnished so little food on a given area as compared to the potato that the cultivation of them at the time the blight appeared had been very largely abandoned. The loss of the potato crop produced widespread famine. The most conservative estimate of the numbers who perished for want of food or by disease caused by a meager diet of unhealthy and innutritions food is set down at six hundred thousand during the two years of the potato blight. ”

“ I am disposed to concur in this view, and think that the annual hiring of the con-acre, may help to wean the Irish peasantry from their present desire of occupying land, and lead them to become labourers for wages. The eager clinging to land, and its subdivision into small holdings, is at once a cause and a consequence of the rapid increase of the people, and of the extreme poverty and want which prevail among them. It is not because the potato constitutes their food, that a kind of famine occurs annually in Ireland between the going out of the old, and the in-coming of the new crop ”

“ That we have ascertained beyond the shadow of doubt, that considerably more than one-third of the entire of the potato crop in Ireland has been already destroyed by the potato disease; and that such disease has not, by any means, ceased its ravages, but, on the contrary, it is daily extending more and more; and that no reasonable conjecture can be formed with respect to the limits of its effects, short of the destruction of the entire remaining potato crop. ”

“ The Famine of 1846-7, consequent on the failure of the Potato Crop, (i. e. of the cheapest and poorest food on which life can be supported,) clearly reveals the parts of the country where the population is redundant; and this is throughout Ireland, until very lately absolutely without provision, and in 106 districts of Scotland, where, without exception, there has been no assessment and a nearly illusory legal provision for the poor. ”

“ Agriculture, neglected for the more agreeable and gainful trade of agitation or assassination, had fallen into such neglect, that the land, in many parts of the country, had become incapable of bearing grain crops. Nothing would do but lazy-beds, in which often a wretched crop was raised in the centre of the ridge, on a third of the land, while the remaining two-thirds were under water. The potato famine came, in 1846, upon a country thus prepared for such a visitation—wasted by agitation, disgraced by murder, impoverished by the protracted reign of terror. ”

“ While the rest of our crops have been unusually good, with a farm value of more than three hundred million dollars over the crops of last year, the effect of the war in our cotton crop leaves a deficiency, compared with 1913, of about twenty-five million dollars for the total value of the crops. And the cotton crop is our money crop, the sale of which abroad pays a large share of our indebtedness, and in addition turns the tide of gold shipments to this country. The cotton states are suffering far more than any other portion of the country. ”

“ Cotton is, of course, the only staple. It ought to be raised in abundance, for the soil will produce nothing else, but he would be a skillful cultivator who should get an average of a third of a bale each from many acres. Ten or twelve bushels of corn to the acre would be a great crop. Indeed, throughout wide stretches in the interior of the cotton-growing States, so worthless was the soil for any other purpose, that the planters used to buy their corn and pork for the mules and negroes, and thus reserve all their arable land for the undivided growth of cotton. ”

“ Unfortunately, Nature, though beneficial in the main, does not accomplish its work without distressing incidents. Breezes are not always propitious; they sometimes create disastrous havoc; torrents are sometimes more than refreshing, and summers unduly hot.
For example, the more abundant a crop is, the more prosperous the country which grows the crop ought [60] to that extent to be; but it sometimes happens that, in such case, prices fall so low as to bring disaster to those who have grown it. ”

“ A plentiful crop of wheat, especially if it continues for several years in succession, lowers the price not only of wheat, but of every other [Pg 13] grain crop in the country, and consequently raises the price of every article of commerce when measured by the amount given for it in any of these grain crops. ”

“ If man were a solitary animal, if he laboured exclusively for himself, if he consumed directly the fruit of his labour—in a word, if he did not exchange—the theory of scarcity would never have appeared in the world. It is too evident that, in that case, abundance would be advantageous, from whatever quarter it came, whether from the result of his industry, from ingenious tools, from powerful machinery of his invention, or whether due to the fertility of the soil, the liberality of nature, or even to a mysterious invasion of products brought by the waves and left by them upon the shore. ”

“ Why lessen the abundance for the people? Why make want thy aim? Why make the poor long for a barren season? For when they do not feel the benefits of a fruitful season, because thou art putting up the price, and art storing up the corn, they would far rather that nothing should be produced, than that thou shouldst do business at the expense of other people’s hunger. Thou makest much of the want of corn, the small supply of food. Thou groanest over the rich crops of the soil; thou mournest the general plenty, and bewailest the garners full of corn ”

“ PLANT DISEASES Most of our vegetable crops are subject to attack by fungus or bacterial parasites which cause disease. Preventive measures are the most important in combating ills of this nature. These may consist of providing unfavorable soil conditions for the disease, as in the case of cabbage clubroot, or disinfection of the “seed” as practised for the control of scab of potatoes. Other measures are: the application of protective sprays, which kill the spores of disease organisms when they germinate; rotation of crops; planting disease-resistant varieties ”

“ On the other hand, if an ordinary soil be supplied with a manure containing a very small quantity of one of the elements of plant food, along with abundance of all the others, the amount of increase which it yields must obviously be measured, not by those which are abundant, but by that which is deficient; for the crop which grows luxuriantly so long as it obtains a supply of all its constituents, is arrested as effectually by the want of one as of all, as has been proved by the experiments of Prince Salm Horstmar and others, referred to in a previous chapter ”

“ That when certain other substances are present in too great abundance, the soil is rendered equally unpropitious to the most important crops.
In these facts the intelligent reader will perceive the foundation of the varied applications to the soil which are everywhere made under the direction of a skilful practice, and of the difficulties which, in so many localities, lie in the way of bringing the land into such a state as shall fit it readily to supply all the wants of those kinds of vegetables which it is the special object of artificial culture easily and abundantly to raise. ”

“ The surface soil may be so far exhausted of one [Pg 60] inorganic substance, that it cannot afford it in sufficient quantity during the present season to bring a given crop to healthy maturity, and yet may, by natural processes, be so far supplied again, during the intermediate growth of certain other crops, as to be prepared in a future season fully to supply all the wants of the same crop, and to yield a plentiful harvest. ”

“ The time and means squandered in trying to grow crops, where only half or quarter [Pg 22] crops can be made, constitute the heaviest item on the wrong side of our farmers' balance-sheets; taxing them more than their National, State, and local governments together do. ”

“ Extreme weather events, such as heavy rainfalls, floods, droughts, cyclones, and heatwaves, will disrupt critical human and natural systems. They could trigger crop failures, wildfires, energy blackouts, infrastructure breakdown, or infectious disease outbreaks. The frequency and magnitude of such events are increasing as the climate changes, according to the IPCC. Moreover, multiple weather disturbances—when several extreme weather events occur within a small region or short time—compound their impact while undercutting efforts by people and governments to cope. ”

“ The dead cattle, the ungarnered crops, the untilled lands—every spring of wealth had dried up at the same moment. Those who were rich became poor; but those who were poor already, and especially those who were poor with the burden of gentility upon their shoulders, found themselves in a perilous state. ”