What was the irish potato famine?
A. Ironically, the dependable potato was responsible for one of the most horrifying famines of the last 200 years. Introduced into Ireland in the mid-1700s, the potato proved to be an ideal crop for its environment. Ireland gets an average of 60 inches of precipitation each year, in general too much for potatoes. However, the precipitation is mostly in the form of soft misty showers, which keep the air cool and the soil moist. By the 1800s, Irish peasants were eating a daily average of 10 potatoes per person. Potatoes supplied about 80 percent of the calories in their diet. The peasants used potato fodder to feed their animals, animals which provided milk, meat and eggs to supplement the peasants’ diet. This dependence on one food crop was dangerous, but no other crop had ever proved to be as reliable. In the 1840s, disaster struck. Three successive years of late blight, the microscopic fungus Phytophthora infestans, and heavy rains rotted the potato crops in the ground. Without potato
