Artifact 5 Irish Potato Blight

The potato has historically been crucial to the development of Ireland. The people have always relied on the potato as a source of sustenance, and their culture even revolved around it. The potato was good for the Irish since it was reliable, and it was dense in calories. In addition to this, it was relatively easy to grow in the Irish soil.

There was a problem though as more and more people became to be dependent on the potato as the main staple of their diet by the 1840s. There was a perfect storm that was created as a new strain of the potato blight from North America arrived in Ireland during a particularly moist year. This environment was perfect for the light to thrive. The British government even tried to help relieve the blight, authorizing the import of corn from the United States. Although this helped with the starvation a bit, it was only a temporary measure.

The potato blight had severe consequences for Ireland itself. Over a span of only five years, the population of Ireland dropped from over 8 million people to 6.6 million people. The majority of the people affected were the poor agricultural workers, and so that industry fell into a steep decline. In the following years, about 2 million Irish emigrated away to other countries, further tanking the Irish population. The result was that in 1921 when the Irish finally achieved their independence from Great Britain, their population was only half of what it had been before the famine.

In my opinion, the introduction of new technology into the food industry has many more benefits than risks. The use of pesticides helps to ward off potential diseases in our food, making the risk of famine much lower. This is seen in Ireland today, as there is no longer a large risk of blight in the crops, but countries in Africa today that don’t use pesticides are seeing similar circumstances that Ireland saw back in the 1800s. GMO’s are also useful in reducing the cost of food and making it more accessible to people around the world. GMO’s have the potential to drastically reduce starvation rates.