Talk:European potato failure

Old Talk

GREAT! This article needed to be done. Would like to see also why the potato became so important a crop in Europe, thus explaining why its loss was so devastating. Stepp-Wulf (talk) 01:40, 29 November 2007 (UTC).

Scotland and Ireland

Is this statement really true? - 'The effect of the crisis on Ireland is incomparable to all other places'

Whilst Ireland was definitely the worst hit country, did the Scottish Highland not suffer a larger population decline as % of their population? 1.7 million left the region and the region is still today one of the most underpopulated areas in Western Europe. There is less than 0.5 million people in the Scottish Highlands and islands today and a huge % of those people are English and lowland Scots. Compare that to how Ireland (eventually) bounced back. The Highland famine effectively ended an entire people and way of life, as horrific as the Irish famine was the same can't be said to the same extent.

So can we change that statement to something like 'Ireland was the worst famine hit country'? Or even have a reference to the devastating effect the famine had on the Gaelic regions of Ireland AND Scotland. Cheers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.14.171.81 (talk) 12:40, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

In fact even editing the sentence slightly to 'The Irish death toll during the crisis is incomparable to all other places' would be much clearer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.14.171.81 (talk) 12:44, 29 May 2013 (UTC)

Scotland again

The article gives the idea that the total population of Scotland should have decreased, but according to the decennial census figures at Demography of Scotland, that's not true... AnonMoos (talk) 21:05, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

Daily consumption

Ireland pre famine 2.1 kg/capita daily. That is alot of potatos! This cant be right. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mtpaley (talk • contribs) 21:34, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

The reference does indeed say 2.1 kg/capita (Table 1.3 on page 10) but I still don't believe it. Mtpaley (talk) 16:58, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Sanity

On average 2 Kg/person per day is clearly ludicrous. I dont eat 2 Kg/day of food as a adult and babies/chidren are going to eat less. Sites such as http://www.weightlossresources.co.uk say that 300g of potato = 226 Kcal. On this basis anyone eating 2000g of potato per day = 2650 KCal = a sensible daily intake but this assumes that everyone including babies are eating 2 Kg/day of potatoes and nothing else. If the population eats more then 2650 Kcal/day (including babies) then Ireland would be the fattest country in the world (would include a ref but the definition seems to be problematical).

Or to put this another way a household of 2 adults + 2.5 children will on average eat 15Kg of potatoes per week in addition to all other foods. -- 20:46, 28 August 2014‎ Mtpaley

2 corrections

I have just corrected[1][2] 2 massive errors in this article. Firstly the idea that a million Highlanders emigrated from Scotland to escape the famine. The total population of the Highlands has never been much more than 300,000 and, at the peak of the famine, only about 200,000 people were at risk.

Secondly the Scottish/Highland diaspora was going on long before the potato famine and more Scots and Highlanders left their country of birth in the period between the end of the famine and the start of the Great Depression - with higher numbers in years towards the end of that period.

I find it alarming that such absolute nonsense should have existed in Wikipedia since 28 November 2007. I think the Wikipedia community should hang their heads in shame over this one. What else is wrong with this article??

References for the above include: Lynch, Michael (1991). Scotland, a New History (1992 ed.). London: Pimlico. ISBN 9780712698931. Devine, T M (1995). The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century. Edinburgh: Birlinn Limited. ISBN 1 904607 42 X.
ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 23:24, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Who was exporting food and a reference?

I have removed the comment in the introduction about the British government exporting food from Ireland because it is unreferenced and nothing I can see or find suggests that the land was in government ownership, or that taxes were paid in food or anything of the sort that would suggest the government directly responsible for such exports (as opposed to failing to respond adequately).

I would also suggest that even if the comment or a similar one can be sourced, it doesn't really belong in the introduction.

FloweringOctopus (talk) 15:04, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

The UK government refused to ban (private) exports of food from Ireland. Such a ban might not have made a big practical difference during the worst years of the famine, but it would have sent a signal that the government was taking the famine very seriously -- while the failure to enact such a ban sent a signal that the theoretical "political economy" ideology of absolute free trade, the deserving vs. the undeserving poor, charity inevitably leading to "pauperization" etc etc was more important to the government than saving the lives of Irish people... AnonMoos (talk) 09:12, 5 October 2024 (UTC)