The potato blight was by far the worst thing to ever hit Ireland. While the actual disease did not directly affect the human population, it was so deadly to the crops that it indirectly made it so that almost every person in Ireland starved. The potato in Ireland was the one and only real cash crop. It was the main source of food for the entire country. When the disease hit the potatoes the entire country basically shut down. There was no food at all. Overall this meant that there was no money for selling the crop, there was no food, people lost their houses and land, and had to move away. This led to massive immigration to the United States for promise of a better life. Unfortunately, the reality that most Irish immigrants were hit with in the new world was extreme poverty and manual labor, much like what they just came from.

We now know that Phytophthora infestans is the pathogen that is associated with the potato blight in Ireland. It is proposed that the origin of this pathogen is from the highlands in central Mexico. I think this could still be a huge problem today if the pathogen were to hit another cash crop in a place such as the United States. There are many crucial food groups that the U.S. is very rich in. A few examples would be tobacco, corn, and wheat. If the pathogen that killed off the potatoes in Ireland were to somehow infect one of these three cash crops the U.S. would most definitely be in a lot of trouble. From the livestock to the human beings there would be a major loss in food, and it could really become a large scale problem very fast.