# Why the Hunger During the Irish Famine? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 7, 2016, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-hunger-during-the-irish-famine/767877 "2016-10-07T18:56:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![race\_to\_the\_bottom](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c4cdca/32.png) [@race\_to\_the\_bottom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/race_to_the_bottom)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2016, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-hunger-during-the-irish-famine/767877/21 "2016-10-07T23:46:24Z")
“Throughout the entire period of the Famine, Ireland was exporting enormous quantities of food to England.” [http://ighm.org/exports-in-famine-times/](http://ighm.org/exports-in-famine-times/) ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2016, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-hunger-during-the-irish-famine/767877/22 "2016-10-08T00:09:13Z")
> [@nightshadea](#): > > if I remember what I read years ago didn’t it take years to get the fungal infection (that’s what the book I read described it as ) out of the ground ? and much like the French wine industry which the same thing happened they had to use American bred and grown starter plants to get it going again ? except in France’s case they found an heirloom patch of old world grapes here and there The [Great French Wine Blight](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_French_Wine_Blight) was caused by an aphid _Phylloxera_ attacking the roots of the grape vine. It was eventually controlled by grafting French vines onto American rootstock, which are resistant to the aphid. To this day almost all grape vines in France are still grafted onto American rootstock. The Great Irish Famine was due to the disease late blight caused by the fungus _Phytophthora infestans_\*. The disease is still a major problem worldwide. It’s currently controlled by planting disease-resistant cultivars, application of fungicide, and good crop management practices. The Irish famine was so severe because they were planting a single susceptible cultivar [Irish Lumper](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/03/130315-irish-famine-potato-lumper-food-science-culture-ireland/), planted year after year in the same places. Once the blight took hold, there was really nothing that could stop it. \*For the sticklers, _P. infestans_ is an oomycete - a fungal-like protist. ---
**Author:** ![mmmiiikkkeee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/edb3f5/32.png) [@mmmiiikkkeee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mmmiiikkkeee)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2016, 2:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-hunger-during-the-irish-famine/767877/23 "2016-10-08T02:47:33Z")
With respect to all the rivers and lakes… setting aside the legal aspects of who owned them and the resources therein, it can be surprising how unproductive cold fresh water systems can be, at least in terms of food suitable for humans. Many lakes can be completely devoid of fish due to environmental limitations, and when there are viable fish populations present it’s very easy to fish them down to extirpation levels within a few years (if, as mentioned, you even know how let alone have the equipment). Plus, consider the actual area occupied by fresh water compared to land. You may have 10,000 streams but look at an air photo and you’ll see that those streams cover a pretty small proportion of the land mass. So if you can’t grow enough domesticated crops using agricultural techniques on your useful land base, how would you expect to harvest enough wild-grown food from a tiny proportion of that area which are far less productive? (Not that any of this was the actual problem as shown above) The coastal fisheries were already covered previously, and also consider why there wasn’t a booming inland fishery in the first place that could have been ramped up during famine. Humans seldom occupy areas and leave vast amounts of untapped easy/cheap resources to swim by in peace. If it’s there we’ll usually harvest it/drill it/mine it/ or otherwise take advantage of it. If the people there don’t need it for themselves they’ll take it anyway and sell it to others to support their society. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2016, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-hunger-during-the-irish-famine/767877/24 "2016-10-08T02:56:16Z")
> [@watchwolf49](#): > > The situation was even worst than this. These lands were mostly all held by the English aristocracy. The peasants worked the landlord’s lands and sent the crops over to England so the English didn’t starve. This is still in the era of Feudal overlordship where the Irish peasants had no rights to the food they grew. These Irish peasants were more of a nuisance occupying lands that would be better suited for English occupation. Sort of? It’s more like this. You’re a landholder who has an estate. You’re almost certainly Protestant (although not necessarily English Protestant. There were a bunch of Irish Protestant landholding families…the Earls of Antrim were Irish, and William Conolly, the famous politician who managed to buy large amounts of the land confiscated from the Irish Jacobites was a convert from Catholicism), and there’s about a 50% chance you’re an absentee landowner. About half the owners of the big estates lived on their land. If you are, you’ve hired a steward to manage your estate for you while you’re living in Dublin or London or wherever. You or your steward, or estate manager, divides up the land and rents it out in long term cash leases to people like me. I’m a farmer. I’m Catholic, reasonably well off, a local leader in the community, donate money to the Church, am involved in local politics and affairs, probably own some land in my own right. I take the good parts or the land and farm it myself. The rest, I sublease in one year, tenant at will leases, sometimes for cash, more commonly for what’s called the conare system, which is basically sharecropping. Here’s a fun fact I came across: > [@](#): > > in 1843 there were 12,529 tenants on the Trinity College estate, but only 1% of these paid their rent to the college; 45% were sub-tenants of this small number and over 52% were sub-tenants of the sub-tenants. But it’s not like the Irish peasant was a nuisance to the landowner, and the landholder didn’t generally want the peasant off the land…somebody had to farm it. It was just that, because of the whole system of subtenancy and the vast economic disparity between landowner and final subtenant, and because tenants outside of Ulster didn’t have land security until the passage of the Land Act of 1870, it was very easy for the poor Irish tenant to find himself in a situation where he couldn’t support himself, especially when the Famine came. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2016, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-hunger-during-the-irish-famine/767877/25 "2016-10-08T04:58:52Z")
One significant issue is that as the tenant farmers that comprised the bulk of the working class Irish subsisted on potatoes (which required no processing other than boiling or roasting) with cream or buttermilk, Catholic Ireland of the era was not equipped to mill grains en masse for domestic consumption, so even if the “Roman corn” (varieties of wheat grown in Ireland for export) were made available it would not have been accessible as food. Robert Peel actually purchased a large quantity of “Indian corn” (the maize derivative that we now commonly refer to as corn) from the United States to ameliorate the famine, but aside from arriving late (in early 1846), none of the few mills in Ireland were capable of grinding the corn into a digestible meal, nor did the Irish know how to cook with it. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2016, 10:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-hunger-during-the-irish-famine/767877/26 "2016-10-08T10:19:33Z")
As terrible as it was they paid the price for being [fussy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3gfjpcgZmw) eaters ---
**Author:** ![Cliffy\_Biro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/57b2e6/32.png) [@Cliffy\_Biro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy_Biro)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2016, 10:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-hunger-during-the-irish-famine/767877/27 "2016-10-08T10:41:11Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Very simply, the potatoes died due to disease and the British, wanting to get rid of the Irish somehow, didnt import food for them and encouraged them to immigrate away. I don’t think it’s accurate to characterise it as some kind of deliberate attempt by the British to starve the Irish out of Ireland. You can accuse (parts of) the British establishment of negligence and incompetence over it, sure. Ideology played a part, but the establishment was split over how to deal with it. A prime minister resigned over the matter. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2016, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-hunger-during-the-irish-famine/767877/28 "2016-10-08T12:56:30Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **nightshadea** : > > Reminding anyone whos French or Irish of that will start a nice brawl … While the French can be a bit snooty about wines (as, for that matter, any nation is about its luxury goods), I’ve never heard of any Irish ingratitude for American aid during or after the Hunger (especially since much of that “American aid” was from Irish immigrants). ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2016, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-hunger-during-the-irish-famine/767877/29 "2016-10-08T17:44:48Z")
> [@Cliffy\_Biro](#): > > I don’t think it’s accurate to characterise it as some kind of deliberate attempt by the British to starve the Irish out of Ireland. You can accuse (parts of) the British establishment of negligence and incompetence over it, sure. Ideology played a part, but the establishment was split over how to deal with it. A prime minister resigned over the matter. Again, it’s more about economics. The landlord did not feel responsible for his tenants. How many landlords today say “oh, you can’t pay your rent, live here free until you get a new job…” They owned their property, it was available for rent and sub-rent and so on provided the tenants pay their rent. If it sounds harsh, it was; but it was less about genocidal ideology and more about greedy self-interest. The same as today, a rich person could go completely broke handing money out to needy and still not make much of a dent in the situation. Could be worse; about the same time, despite no famine or failure to pay rent, the landlords in Scotland still booted their clan members off their land because sheep were more profitable than paltry sharecrops. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2016, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-hunger-during-the-irish-famine/767877/30 "2016-10-08T18:04:39Z")
An older OP of mine: \*\*Why didn’t Ireland ever develop an aquaculture-food/diet base \*\*[Why didn't Ireland ever develop an aquaculture-food/diet base? - Factual Questions - Straight Dope Message Board](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=625247) Be aware that hotheads may take the very question as some sort of Irish-Famine Denial, and answer (in)appropriately. ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2016, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-hunger-during-the-irish-famine/767877/31 "2016-10-09T05:25:19Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Be aware that hotheads may take the very question as some sort of Irish-Famine Denial, and answer (in)appropriately. Such as [this piece of gross tactlessness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3gfjpcgZmw)by Alan Partridge. Note that the two men sharing his table are playing Irish Television executives. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2016, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-hunger-during-the-irish-famine/767877/32 "2016-10-09T15:31:34Z")
As to the original use of “denialism:” questions like “how many Jews were really murdered by the Nazis” (even with the “really”) or “Why did the Jews go like sheep to the slaughter in WWII” (even with the offensive literal analogy, which is actually a correct use of an understandable figure of speech): both absolutely sane and, unless suggested by other reasons, good questions. And, as it happens, asked and addressed more thoroughly by Jews themselves and others than few other questions in history. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2016, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-hunger-during-the-irish-famine/767877/33 "2016-10-10T14:04:21Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > It was and still is the most important subsistence crop throughout most of the Americas. Large swathes of Africa, too. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-the-hunger-during-the-irish-famine/767877.md?page=1)