Potato facts

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potato
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Potato facts

• 1. Potato blossoms are 5-lobed, 2-3 cm in diam.,
  vary from white to deep bluish purple and
  resemble those of the poisonous nightshade
  (Family Solanaceae).
• 2. The potato is a tuber which forms a the
  swollen end of an underground stem.
• 3. The buds of aborted leaves form the eyes of
  the potato. By planting chunks of potato
  containing these eyes genetically identical
  potato plants are grown.
• 4. Thomas Jefferson gets the credit for
  introducing French fries to America when he
  served them at a White House dinner.

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Potato facts

• 5. The average American eats about 140.6 lbs. of
  potatoes each year.
• 49.8 lbs. Fresh potatoes
• 58.8 lbs. Frozen French fries, hash browns, etc.
• 16.9 lbs. Potato chips
• 13.4 lbs. Mashed potato flakes, au gratin mixes,
  etc.
• 1.7 lbs. Canned potatoes
• The average German eats twice as much.

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Potato facts

• 6. Nutritional facts
• one serving of potato is one medium potato, about
  5.5 oz (148 kg)
• the potato is about 80 water and 20 solids
• per serving
• 120 Calories from fat (20 of daily value based
  on a 2,000 calorie diet)
• Total Fat 0g 0
• Saturated Fat 0g 0
• Cholesterol 0mg 0
• Sodium 5mg 0
• Potassium 680mg 20
• Carbohydrates 27g 9
• Dietary Fiber 2g 9
• Sugars 3g
• Protein 3g

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Potato facts

• 7. Idaho is mentioned most often as a preferred
  source for potatoes than is any other point of
  origin for any other crop.
• 8. The potato is the 4th most important food
  crop in the world
• 1. wheat
• 2. rice
• 3. maize
• 4. potato

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Potato facts

• 9. Potatoes are grown in all 50 states and in
  125 countries throughout the world
• 10. Since the early 1960s the percentage
  increase in area planted in developing countries
  has been higher than for any other major food
  crop.
• 11. Annual world production
• 275 million tons
• Covers 18 million hectares
• Russian Federation Poland is the worlds largest
  producer 28
• China India is second 22

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Potato facts

• 12. Europe is the largest per capita consumer
  (although consumption is declining).
• 13. The worlds largest potato chip was produced
  by the Pringles Co. It measured 23 x 14.5.
• 14. An Englishman, Eric Jenkins, grew 370 lbs.
  of potatoes from one plant.
• 15. The largest potato grown was 7 lbs. 1 oz.
  (1953, Guinness Book of World Records).

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Potato facts

• Origin of the potato
• South America probably in the Peruvian Andes
• Arrival in Europe
• one of the major events in mans recent history,
• at the time it was a matter of relatively little
  moment.
• not sure when it was, there are many legend and
  stories.
• 1. shipwreck off the coast of England
• 2. Sir Walter Raleigh bringing the potato back
  as food on his voyages

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Origin of the potato
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Potato facts

• It seems likely that it was introduced more than
  once.
• 1576shopping list found with potatoes to buy
• 1588established garden vegetable in parts of
  Italy
• 1653the potato was still a luxury food til after
  the middle of the century but discussions in the
  Royal Society advocated the use of the potato as
  a defense against famine.
• 1664John Forster in his book Englands Happiness
  Increased (A Sure and Easie Remedy against all
  succeeding Dear Years) said
• By planting of the Roots ten thousand men in
  England and Wales who knew not how to live, or
  what to do to get a maintenance for their
  families, may of any one acre of ground make
  thirty pounds a year.

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World War I

• the Great Potato Plan
• A good famine food.

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3. Refuse second helpings of other food until
youve had more potatoes.
1. Serve potatoes for breakfast on three days a
week.
4. Serve potatoes in other ways that just plain
boiled.
2. Make your main dish a potato one day a week.
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Potato Blight

• Late Blight of Potato
• The potato
• likes a moist, cool climate
• a deep friable soil,
• both of which are found abundantly in Ireland.
• This combination is also good for many plant
  diseases of potato.
• The potato blight fungus had recently arrived in
  Europe from diseased tubers in a ship from North
  America.

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Potato Blight

• At first all sorts of different reasons were
  suggested as the cause of the trouble
• frost,
• easterly winds,
• the moon,
• guano manure,
• even the summer thunderstorms.
• There are several diseases that plague potatoes.
• Curlviral disease
• Botrytis cinereusbacterial
• Late Blight of Potato
• The cause was in fact a killer fungus, then still
  undiagnosed Phytophthora infestans.

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Late blight of potato
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Phytophthora infestans
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Potato Blight

• LifeCycle
• the practice of piling the rotting tubers and
  plants near the garden served to reinfect next
  years crop.

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Background on Ireland

• 8000 BCarrival of first men in Ireland across
  the land-bridge from Scotland
• 100 BCarrival of Gaels
• AD 432St. Patrick arrives to help convert Gaelic
  Kings to Christianity
• 795Arrival of Norsemen (Vikings)
• 1641Great Catholic-Gaelic rebellion for return
  of lands (59 of land held by Catholics)
• 1688James II deposed in England (22 of land
  held by Catholics)
• 1695first penal laws enacted against Catholics
  (14 of land held by Catholics)
• 17147 of land held by Catholics

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Background on Ireland

• Celtic chieftains and Norman-Irish overlords
• Brehon Law
• Ireland was divided into baronies of various
  sizes, each constituting a more or less
  independent principality ruled over by a
  chieftain.
• The baronies were subdivided into townships of
  various sizes.
• In the moors they might be 1,000 acres in better
  agricultural lands 325 acres.
• The cheiftanship of a clan or tribal group was
  not strictly hereditary, though it was by custom
  vested within one family.
• The heir to the chief was chosen by the tribe.
  This custom, known as tanistry, gave rise to
  everlasting feuds and unrest and was a premium on
  murder.

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Background on Ireland

• Gavelkindon the death of the father, the use of
  the land (not ownership) was divided equally
  between all his sons. The daughters were paid
  off in money.
• The result of this custom led to
• a minute subdivision of the land
• communal occupation on a family basis.
• Lord or Chief and their immediate family
• Farmer Lordssublet small pieces of the land
  (conacres) to the cottiers
• Cottiers-- cultivated the soil and having no land
  of their own they were serfs

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Background on Ireland

• The dependence of the Irish upon the potato
  helped greater numbers to survive.
• Potatoes could feed many
• could be grown on small plots
• not detract from the payments due the landlord
  for cash crops.
• The potato was a subsistence crop
• each family needed a definite area, roughly an
  Irish acre (conacre) for six persons, on which to
  grow its supply of potatoes and cereal crops to
  sell.
• Most people owned no land of their own, and to
  grow sufficient potatoes and cash crops, more
  land was needed and the cottier had to rent this
  land.
• Often all the cereal crops he grew on it had to
  be sold to pay the rent.

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Background on Ireland

• The Farmer Lords made sure of getting the rent by
  insisting on payment before the potatoes were
  removed.
• It was a big gamble for renting additional land.
  
• If they won they got to eat but had no cash
• if they lost, there was a shortage of food and
  loss of all cash resources including the house.
• The cottiers were never given leases and any
  default in rent was followed with eviction, many
  times by force.
• To make sure that the people did not remain to be
  a burden on the landlord the huts and cottages
  were destroyed.

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Background on Ireland

• If this werent bad enough, the Church began
  taking a tithe on potatoes because it was a new
  crop and the proceeds went to support the
  growing Protestant Church.
• This tithe was collected by a proctor, who took a
  commission.
• A common trick was to value the crop on the basis
  of a famine year and the yield on a year of
  plenty.
• Therefore the proctor taxed the cottier on
  potatoes at a high price, but paid the church a
  relatively low price.

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Background on Ireland

• Despite trouble with the economy upon which they
  depended, most landlords, Irish and English
  alike, lived generally far away in England or on
  the Continent,
• maintained their lifestyles of conspicuous
  consumption
• they were living high on the hog

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Ejectment Murder As Major Mahon, a gentleman
holding large estates in Roscommon was returning
home about twenty minutes past six oclock on the
evening of Monday, from a meeting of the board of
guardians of the Roscommon union, he was shot
dead by an assassin, about four miles from
Strokestown. There were two persons engaged in
the murder, according to our informant. Both
fired one piece missed fire, but the other
proved fatal, lodging a heavily loaded discharge
in the breast. The victim exclaimed, Oh, God!
and spoke no more. Major Mahon was formerly in
the 95th Dragoons, now Lancers, and succeeded to
the inheritance of the late Lord Harlands
estates about two years ago, the rental being
about 10,000. The people were said to be
displeased with him for two reasons. The first
was his refusal to continue the conacre system,
the second was his clearing away what he deemed
the surplus population. He chartered two vessels
to America and freighted them with his evicted
tenatry. The Nation, Dublin, 6 November 1847.
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Crop Failures

• Two types of failures
• 1. Fault of the potato
• where the potato fails to grow at all
• where the plant grows but does not thrive
  producing poor tubers.
• where the tubers are destroyed
• 2. Not the fault of the potato
• cereal crop failure

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European temperature
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Crop failures
potato
grain
both
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Crop failures
potato
grain
both
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Crop failures
potato
grain
both
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Subsistence farming for potatoes
Year 1
Year 2
S
Su
F
W
S
Su
F
W
Grow
potatoes
grain
potatoes
Eat
grain
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Subsistence farming for potatoes
Year 1
Year 2
S
Su
F
W
S
Su
F
W
Grow
potatoes
grain
potatoes
Eat
grain
If the potato failed there was an urgent demand
in the autumn for corn and oats. the peasants
had a limited supply of cereals, they only grew
enough to tide him over the two or
three hungry months of late summer. if
(lacking potatoes) they consumed their oats, they
could procure no more, having no cash
resources famine conditions arose in the first
month or two of the following year.
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Subsistence farming for potatoes
Year 1
Year 2
S
Su
F
W
S
Su
F
W
Grow
potatoes
grain
potatoes
Eat
grain
If the potato failed there was an urgent demand
in the autumn for corn and oats. the peasants
had a limited supply of cereals, they only grew
enough to tide him over the two or
three hungry months of late summer. if
(lacking potatoes) they consumed their oats, they
could procure no more, having no cash
resources famine conditions arose in the first
month or two of the following year.
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Subsistence farming for potatoes
Year 1
Year 2
S
Su
F
W
S
Su
F
W
Grow
potatoes
Blue months
grain
potatoes
Eat
grain
If the cereals failed there was no bread or
meal for use during late autumn, winter and
spring, a heavier use was made on the store of
potatoes potatoes were often consumed by the end
of the spring of the next year, and they were
left without food supplies of any kind until the
late autumn when the new crop of potatoes were
ready to dig. !!!
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Potato famine

• THE SETTING FOR A DISASTER LIKE EUROPE HAD NOT
  SEEN BEFORE
• Travelers in Ireland had long commented on the
  extreme misery of the poorest Irish peasant.
• England and Ireland at that time was the culture
  and society written about by Charles Dickens with
  all of the flaws which he described in his
  novels.
• In the USA slavery was still widely practiced and
  there was the opening of the industrial
  revolution with the sweatshops and child labor
  practices.

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The Potato Eaters by van Gogh I have tried to
make it clear how those people eating their
potatoes under the lamplight, have dug the earth
with those very hands they put in the dish, and
so it speaks of manual labor, and how they have
honestly earned their food.All winter long I
have had in hand the threads of this tissue, and
have search for the definite pattern, and though
it has become a tissue of a rough and coarse
aspect, nevertheless the threads have been
selected carefully and according to certain
rules.
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Potato still-life by van Gogh. I mean to
express the material in such a way that they
become heavy, solid lumps, which would hurt you
if they were thrown at you.
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Background on Potato famine

• Laissez-Faire economic philosophy
• Dominated the thinking of politicians and
  economists who manage the economy.
• It called for non-intervention by government in
  the economy and held that it was wrong for the
  government to meddle in the economics at all.
• Those who had the most to gain from economic
  prosperity would see to the protection of those
  who made that prosperity possible (note the
  similarity to trickle-down economics and
  Reaganomics).
• The landlords and businessmen and investors had
  nothing to gain by allowing their workers to
  starve.

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Background on Potato famine

• Poor Business Practices
• The failure of the Irish economy to grow outside
  of Agriculture was associated with the ways in
  which the Irish as a Culture adapted to the new
  industrial economy
• the ways which businesses were established and
  the inability of local groups and organizations
  to pool resources to foster economic growth
  (especially in the Fishing industry).
• These problems are seen by economists not to have
  been caused by the dominance of England by the
  choices of the Irish informed by cultural
  tendencies and practices.

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Background on Potato famine

• 1815
• the Irish people were dependent not only on the
  potato as a source of food and income and upon
  the purchase of other agricultural products,
  including a most important onewheat.
• The purchase of great quantities of Irish
  agricultural produce by England helped the Irish
  economy to grow and people to prosper.
• 18005.0 million
• 18216.5 million
• 18418.0 million
• The excessive demand created by the English war
  efforts distorted the Irish economy. When the
  major European wars came to an end, England
  reduced dramatically its investment in Irish
  agricultural products.

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Background on Potato famine

• England was a valuable trading partner and a
  politically dominant one.
• With the end of a boom, however, comes a bust and
  unemployment was the result.
• It is the backdrop for the famine and a primary
  underlying foundation for the events and
  suffering which occurred.
• 1841
• Two-thirds of the Irish were dependent on
  Agriculture as a source of income.
• The remaining one-third engaged in other
  industrial and economic pursuits that did not
  fare well in competition against a developing
  English manufacturing and industrial economy.
• Successful economic strategies, products and
  markets were not developed.

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Potato famine

• 1845
• Famine noted in the Irish press for the first
  time on September 9. Sir Robert Peel, Prime
  Minister of England, took prompt action
• Purchased 100,000 worth of Indian corn and
  cornmeal in the USA
• it was not then known that corn meal would be
  empty of vitamin C and that it would combine with
  other ailments to produce dysentery and cause
  more to die.
• Relief commission was set up and formed local
  committees for relief. Local contributions were
  supplemented to the extent of two thirds by
  government grants from the people of England.

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Potato famine

• Relief Works The English Government paid half
  the cost of such projects. 140,000 people were
  employed at one time.
• Such relief projects are often ridiculed in
  popular accounts (canals with no water, famine
  roads going nowhere) but there were several
  important functional projects such as docks and
  roads which are still in used today.
• These were very similar to the make work projects
  of the American depression under FDR.
• The English government provided 365,000 sterling
  to the Irish people in the form of loans between
  1845-1846.

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Potato famine

• The Protective Tariff on grain was repealed and
• The Repeal of the Corn Laws was a step designed
  to lower the cost of grain to the Irish.
• This decision was not popular in England
• because he helped the Irish in this way the
  English Prime Minister was put out of office.June
  1845
• The Government targeted the Irish landlords as
  responsible for the Famine. They made them pay
  rates to support relief.
• In need of money for their high lifestyle, the
  landlords exacted the money from the agricultural
  work force, causing evictions on a large scale.

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Potato famine

• At the same time they were implementing modern
  agricultural practices
• called for larger farms
• with fewer people resident and working on the
  land.
• Displaced agricultural workers could not find
  employment in industry which had not developed
  sufficiently in other areas.
• 1846
• Universal Potato Crop Failure in July and August
  lead to the greatest wave of immigration, which
  generally took place in the summer months.
• Relief employment was still provided in
  significant amounts
• Sep. 30,000
• Oct. 150,000
• Nov. 285,000
• Dec. 500,000

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Potato famine

• Expenditures to the Irish from the English Board
  of Works amounted to 30,000 sterling a day with
  an administrative staff of 11,500 persons.
• 1847 (Black 47)
• The worst time of the Famine.
• public works were abandoned and direct relief
  extended.
• An act was passed providing for the
  establishment of kitchens and the free
  distribution of soup.
• Epidemics of famine fever (typhus) and relapsing
  fever combined with dysentery, caused by
  consumption of turnips.
• Corn meal provided by the government did not
  contain Vitamin C, a fact unknown at the time.
  Famine dropsy or hunger edema occurred as a result

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Potato famine

• In 1847 100,000 immigrants sailed to the U.S.
• 1849
• 932,000 people were maintained on English
  government relief paid for by taxation of
  landlords.
• Population of Ireland was down to 6.5 million
  (down from 8 million in 1841).

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Potato famine

• Ejectment MurderAs Major Mahon, a gentleman
  holding large estates in Roscommon was returning
  home about twenty minutes past six oclock on the
  evening of Monday, from a meeting of the board of
  guardians of the Roscommon union, he was shot
  dead by an assassin, about four miles from
  strokestown. There were two persons engaged in
  the murder, according to our informant. Both
  fired one pies missed fire, but the other proved
  fatal, lodging a leavily loaded discharge in the
  breast. The victim exclaimed, Oh, God! and
  spoke no more. Major Mahon was formerly in the
  95th Dragoons, now Lancers, and succeeded to the
  inheritance of the late Lord Harlands estates
  about two years ago, the rental being about
  10,000. The people were said to be displeased
  with him for two reasons. The first was his
  refusal to continue the conacre system, the
  second was his clearing away what he deemed the
  surplus population. He chartered two vessels to
  America and freighted them with his evicted
  tenatry. The Nation, Dublin, 6 November 1847.

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Potato famine

• Starving in a sea of seafood
• James H. Tuke, 1846 So rude is their tackle and
  so fragile and liable to be upset are their
  primitive boats or coracles, made of wickerwork
  over which sail cloth is stretched, that they can
  only venture to sea in fine weather and thus,
  with food almost in sight, the people starve.
• After centuries of seasonal famine due to crop
  failure the Irish people had not adapted to the
  consumption of seafood nor had they developed a
  fishing community that could rise to the occasion
  by producing a larger supply of food.
• The fishing community/culture failed to develop a
  cooperative relationship with the government and
  community and between its own members.

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Potato famine

• Summary
• This was a disaster the likes of which had never
  occurred in Europe.
• Economic depression as well as the Famine
  combined with economic re-alignment, changes in
  agriculture technology and the rise of industry.
• The potato was hit just as badly in England as in
  Ireland that summer,
• but the blight caused no famine there.
• In England, unlike Ireland, even the poorest
  could afford food other than the potato, and no
  other crop except the potato was affected in
  either country.
• There was hope that some of the Irish potato crop
  could be saved, but one report described how when
  they tried boiling potatoes which had been dug it
  was impossible to bear the stench they emitted.

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Kapok
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Kapok
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Kapok
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Kapok
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Kapok
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Kapok
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Kapok
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Crop Failures

• If the potato failedthere was an urgent demand
  in the autumn for corn and oats.
• The peasants had a very limited supply of
  cereals,
• they only grew enough to afford an occasional
  oatcake
• and enough to tide him over the two or three
  hungry months of late summer.
• If (lacking potatoes) they consumed their oats,
  they could procure no more, having no cash
  resources
• famine conditions arose in the first month or two
  of the following year.

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Crop Failures

• If the cereals failedthere was no bread or meal
  for use during late autumn, winter and spring,
• a heavier use was made on the store of potatoes
• the result that they were often consumed by the
  end of the spring of the next year, and they were
  left without food supplies of any kind until the
  late autumn when the new crop of potatoes were
  ready to dig.
• Sometimes they might have a patch of early
  potatoes in addition to the main crop, which
  might be dug in July, but this was not common.
• Early varieties were not generally grown by the
  peasantry
• they cultivated heavy cropping, late, coarse
  varieties (they did not have a lot of growing
  space)
• This happened a lot!!!!!

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The Potato and Art

• The Potato Eaters by van Gogh
• I have tried to make it clear how those people
  eating their potatoes under the lamplight, have
  dug the earth with those very hands they put in
  the dish, and so it speaks of manual labor, and
  how they have honestly earned their food.All
  winter long I have had in hand the threads of
  this tissue, and have search for the definite
  pattern, and though it has become a tissue of a
  rough and coarse aspect, nevertheless the threads
  have been selected carefully and according to
  certain rules.

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The Potato and Art

• Potato still-life by van Gogh.
• I mean to express the material in such a way
  that they become heavy, solid lumps, which would
  hurt you if they were thrown at you.

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