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The potato blight of the Irish famine 1845-52 also occurred in Scotland and across Northern Europe causing devastation and hunger but it was not responsible for the million deaths that occurred in Ireland. The Irish potato famine was man made.
I am sure there are others here who know more but I'll have a go.
97% of the land was owned by landlords (many of whom were absentees, mostly in England). The majority of land was kept for producing cash crops for export profit (cheap potatoes for England, profits going to the colonial power) the remainder was rented and sub let annually in smaller and smaller plots, the tenants could be turfed off at will, with the majority of people having no access to land.
Anyone who grows crops will know that this tenuous insecure system is hopeless as it does not allow for rotation (encouraging disease), the small holding was not big enough for a variety of crops to feed the family, so people (3 million) were totally dependant solely on potatoes (and one variety at that, again encouraging disease) and any improvements went to the landlord.
The people were deeply impoverished, living precariously, with no safety net or margin to keep them from disaster and no representation to change their lot. They also had to pay the landlord rent, often through their labour working on the landlords land and to pay tax. When the blight came they had no options, no ability to buy alternative seeds or crops they were evicted from their plots in their hundreds of thousands, they could starve or migrate and there was no assistance.
Throughout the famine armed guards protected 4000 ships carrying potatoes, butter, salmon, beans etc FROM starving Ireland TO England and the export of Irish cattle, ham and bacon increased during the starvation. Meanwhile the poor of Ireland could afford no food, a million died from hunger and opportunistic disease and 2 million migrated.
There are other factors, and I'm sure there are others out there who can contribute more, and much to read, however the crisis from potato blight and the starvation were not inevitable and not reproduced to this extent in other affected countries.
Not so sure Antoinette, glyphosate is a herbicide not a fungicide?
As for the famine.
In 1841 Ireland had a population of just over eight million, around a third of the then UK's 26 million. Even today it's still only around five million, while the UK's is around 65 million.
It's still raw. Recently when photographing in a graveyard in Lurgan, Co Armagh I got into a conversation with a local. He was pointing out various interesting graves and I remarked on how crowded it was and wondered why they hadn't expanded into a large grassy tract next to the wall. He said it was a mass grave from the famine, and added that relatively recently there had been an attempt to raise a monument but descendant families were, even now, too ashamed to have their names on it, so it never happened.
The Collective Evolution article quoted by Jeanette in support of her attack on Monsanto as a developer of agricultural chemicals ends with an advertisement for a free numerology reading - " Your life path number can tell you a LOT about you. With the ancient science of numerology you can find out accurate and revealing information just from your name and birthdate ...... learn more about how you can use numerology in your life to find out more about your path and journey ".
I don't think that enhances the credibility of the article.
"I reiterate, we should always err on the side of caution." I wholeheartedly disagree but surely if that's what you believe you should be staying inside anyway.
BTW, when you use the word "fact" it is sufficient to use it by itself. You don't need to say "true facts" as it implies that there are some "false facts" which is just nonsense.
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