158 comments on A distant mirror: Ireland's great famine
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158 comments on A distant mirror: Ireland's great famine
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Ugo,
An interesting post, but I think you are wrong in thinking that the famine was due to deforestation causing soil erosion and overpopulation on two accounts.
It's clear that the disease potato blight caused an almost complete destruction of the entire potato crop either the growing plants or of the harvested tubers. This would be equivalent to the entire wheat and corn crop of the US being destroyed in two successive years. Had soil degradation played a role, we would have expected a long period of declining yields. In fact the best land was used for grazing, to produce meat and butter for export. Had all of this more fertile land also been planted into potatoes the crop would still have failed. A similar thing happened in Scotland and other parts of Europe at the same time. Had other food crops not been exported, or if wheat stored had been made available to the poor probably the famine could have been avoided.
Its unlikely that the sites used for potato cultivation were impoverished by deforestation and soil erosion; many of the plots are small and walled with stone fences. The rainfall in SW Ireland is frequent, and animals would have been excluded. Soil erosion is usually caused by overgrazing destroying ground cover, or droughts followed by very heavy rains. Many of the granite derived soils have a natural frost weathering that creates thin stony soil, you can see very similar landscapes in Scotland, Eastern Canada, the southern highlands of Australia. Stones on the surface are not necessarily due to soil erosion, but can be signs of soil erosion in other landscapes, especially where the is wind erosion and overgrazing( middle east).
The tragedy was that these poor soils were productive enough to provide a potato crop to feed the population but not productive enough if planted to cereal crops. Thus the poor were almost entirely depending upon one crop, just as Asia today depends upon the rice crop, or Russia on the wheat crop.
Neil - Your analogy:
does little to refute Ugo's assertion that "deforestation led to the Irish Potato Famine". The U.S. is a large continent with a large diversity of climate and soils. This "diversity" makes the U.S. agriculture more resilient to collapse (not immune however to blight from mono-cropping)than a relatively homogeneous landscape such as Ireland.
Although political factors such as Irish poverty were contributing factors (there is hardly ever one single cause of disasters such as famines or genocide) but deforestation is the leading cause of the current "Biodiversity crash" leading to impoverishment of "the poorest peoples" as pointed out famously by the eminent biologist E.O. Wilson.
Take some time and study one of the most recent famines on record: Haiti. Jared Diamond spelled out in Collapse how deforestation has led to the impoverishment of the unfortunate poor people of Haiti. Meanwhile the wealthy live in detached splendor in Gated Green Zones.
Joe
I would agree that tropical soils are rapidly degraded after deforestation, as are soils in the middle east( not due to deforestation but overgrazing).
I was pointing out that stones are not necessarily signs of soil degradation. The fact that agriculture is productive today in Ireland, in heavy soils that have been cleared and that the best soils were not used by landless peasants for food cultivation, and the rapid onset of food shortages co-incident with potato blight in many parts of Europe suggest that the soils that were used for potato cultivation did not suddenly erode causing a collapse of food production.
As I recall form visiting SW Ireland their are still abandoned small walled plots in these regions. With blight resistant potato varieties they would probably still be able to feed a large serf population. Better opportunities in Australia, and N&S America have ensured that both Ireland and Scotland have not been re-settled in this way.
Good thoughts Neil1947. Also thx to Ugo for a thought-provoking post. IMO the detail in a post, and whether it is deemed correct or not, can be less important than the discussion it stimulates.
For a bit more on the irish potato famine this article is quite good;
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol7/iss2/art9/
It talks about direct and indirect food entitlement and how population density was a factor driving the reduction in crop diversity. Also the factors that gave rise to the incredible vulnerability of subsistence on a monocrop. Vulnerability is probably the key word in trying to understand the primary causes of the famine. Socio-economic and political causes are also mentioned.
The current vulnerability of our global food supply to declining FF's is IMO truly terrifying.
TW
Good points, Neil.
I also was surprised to read about soil erosion as a central issue, which shouldn't be this dramatic in this climate. However it may have been one factor that triggered the sudden decline as soon as the Irish met the Limits of Growth on their island.
Instead, I think that the monoculture of potatoes as the only food supplier for the Irish was the core issue: When potato harvest was bad the Irish had no alternatives to feed on (being not allowed to eat the export crops). I think I have also read this several times as a typical example for the unsustailability of monocultures and non-diversified economies.
The same is happening now in third world countries that make a "living" solely from mining or coffee crops. As soon as the coffee price goes down these have a national crisis - and are an easy prey for the shock-therapy of neoliberal first world playgrounds and their multinational corporations.
Nowadays monocultures and the lack of diversification are considered among the central causes of poverty and instability in third world countries. Meanwhile many have learned this lesson and strive to diversify their economy - which is a hard task as they are also hampered by protectionistic policies from the north.
Summing up: Ireland suffered the unsustainable economy structure of a third world country. Therefore the Irish had to starve.
With peak oil we are facing the same problem: We are dependent on the "oil monoculture". If we don't manage to diversify to other resources in time we'll have to die away as well.