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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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.