You are correct that the government had a lot to do with it. Please take time to read about the war that left the Irish as paupers in their own land. As stated above, the English took all the good land for grazing and growing wheat. The Irish had to make do with what was left. There are not enough calories in anything else to have fed the people except potatoes. As for beans, compare the calories per acre of a bean crop vs potatoes. Please take time to do this. The information is readily available on the internet. You will be thoroughly surprised how much potatoes produce and how little beans produce by comparison.
Some of my relatives are descended from Irish immigrants who came to the U.S. during the famine. The family name was Gallagher.
I already looked it up and know the comparison. I did that before commenting last time. I understand that potatoes are more calorie dense, but I still believe that part of the issue, outside of government interference, may have been that more people needed to be growing food. I don’t have time to research this fully, but I did take time to read a few articles and they made references to people not having money to buy food.
They could neither grow food (because the potato that kept them alive was diseased), nor could they buy food as they were paupers in their own land. The land they lived on was generally rented from the rich landowner in an entitlement system. The landowners (English gentlemen) wanted to get rid of the Irish so they could use the land for farming to their profit. From the English perspective, the famine produced excellent results. A few million people starved to death, about 10 million more emigrated, and what was left were in many cases displaced as the only food to be found was in places with charity houses (the “poor” house often referenced in movies). Once they left their homes, the landowner could take over. It sounds brutal. It was brutal. If you want a reference, the “Lumpers” potato was the primary variety grown. The fundamental problem at the time is that all varieties available were susceptible to the strain of late blight that circulated. Today we have varieties that are late blight resistant. See Sarpo Mira if you want something to read about.
Runner beans, “French beans” (prob bush P. vulgaris) and broad (fava) beans grow in SW Ireland. I saw some runner beans in a greenhouse in NW Ireland, it’s just too cool to grow them outside there. Fava beans, need a LONG cool season. Peas will grow in Ireland for sure, and rutabagas.
Oh, and while we’re at it, you know they had to restock turkeys in Tennessee, in the 1990’s. We heard they were killed out like the deer by market hunters in the 1940’s. But a neighbor said his father told him they were not hunted out, that they simply died. So what else happened in the 1940’s? The beginning of large scale confinement chicken production, and presumably the spreading of chicken manure. I have always read that if you keep chickens and turkeys together, the turkeys will catch a very virulent disease that will kill them if you don’t medicate them. I assume that the manure from confinement chickens was spread on fields where turkeys came to hunt for bugs and to glean the crops. The reason this subject came up, is that the local turkey population pretty much went away some 8 years ago, and this neighbor pointed out that it happened after a local farmer bought manure from a confinement chicken operation and spread it on local fields. Took a few years for the turkey population to rebound.
Fortunately, wild turkeys are very common in the southeast now. I routinely see them strutting through my yard. I saw a flock of about 30 on my land near Hamilton Alabama just a few weeks ago.
We are watering down categories. First it was discussion of club variety apples that we can’t grow and now it is about historic famines. I vote for having the fruit growing category being exclusively about our experiences and questions about growing fruit.
they are in northern Maine now. state trapped them in the south and released up here. we see them everywhere. they arent native this far north but milde4r winters and plentiful fields give them plenty to eat. when the snow is deep they come into town and raid the bird feeders. funny to watch them fight the crows, pigeons and squirrels for the seed. they are pretty aggressive.
we must have been lucky as we raised turkeys, ducks, chickens and geese in the same coop for decades with no issues. of course much smaller numbers than a commercial farm. would get a occasional bird die for unknown reasons but only 1. ducks and geese never get sick and they are far more cold hardy than the other 2. ive seen the ducks/ geese out in the run, sleeping on the ground at -20. head under a wing and feet pulled up into their feathers.