I bleed green

In several (metaphorical) senses of the term.

I thought I would revisit a little "family" history on today's occasion. What does the Irish Diaspora have to do with gardening and sustainability? Turns out, quite a bit. First a little background.

By 1845 most of the tennant holdings (the majority of irish did not actually own the land they worked on) were less than five acres for 24% and less than 15 for 40%. With much of the land devoted to raising crops simply to pay the rent, the farmers and their families had to feed themselves on what little space remained. (Corned beef was out, not enough pasture land.) Potatoes were caloric and nutritionally dense and space efficient. The inherent cruelty was brought about by a taste for beef that was growing next door in England. Quite simply, to make room for English ranchers, the locals were pushed out of the best grazing and farming areas.

The "great famine" was not the first time that potatoes had failed in ireland, in fact, due to other diseases, there were significant crop losses 24 times between, 1728 and 1844. The potato was far from reliable, but when faces with something unreliable, or watching your family starve, well, you roll the dice.

And in 1845 the dice came up snake eyes. Phytophthora infestans or late blight first manifested in the Americas but due to expanding trade, travel, and lax agricultural inspection, found its way into Europe where it also struck in belgium, but in Ireland, wiped out from what reports estimate a third to a half of the potato crops. The following year was even worse, as losses hit 3/4ths of the crop. Losses receded the following year, but because of the devastation, much of the seed potato stock had been eaten, and fewer fields could be planted.

Early efforts to provide relief from the British were successful, but Prime Minister Robert Peel's efforts raised the ire from laissez faire factions. Peel's successor John Russel created then later abandoned a set of unproductive public works efforts, and parliamentary law basically left the starving tenants the responsibility of the landlords, who in turn evicted them. Aid and relief rules dictated that nothing be distributed to families who held more than a quarter acre. So in effect, if you could grow enough to pay the rent, you had to starve. But if you fed yourself with the crops grown on your meager plot, you got the boot.

When the previously mentioned potato failure occurred in the 1780s, Ireland closed her ports to export, and the other crops that had been grown (to pay the rent) were kept on the island. Food prices dropped during this abundance and famine was averted. However, the landlords and merchants, who would have otherwise sold those commodities at a higher profit applied the golden rule: he who has the gold makes the rules. The lobbied parliment to ensure that this sort of thing didn't happen again. Their success meant that during the majority of the 1840's famine, starving families loaded grain onto wagons bound for the eastern shores, and shipped it off to England. The market had decided, and the Irish were expendable.

Once again history teaches that often, famine comes about not because of a lack of available food, but a lack of ability to pay. So lets all learn from this lesson folks, rotate and diversify your seed stocks, and buy only fairly traded imports.

Our modern taste for cheap coffee is a direct analog to the British desire for cheap beef and Irish grains. You do the math.


On another note, I started the spring crops in the greenhouse..er...sunroom sunday evening. more to follow later.

(a special thanks to the hordes of anonymous contributors at wikipedia for helping me track down some dates and statistics I could not immediately recall)