Why Would the Irish Protest Famine-Proof Potatoes?

Why Would the Irish Protest Famine-Proof Potatoes? Written by Dennis Avery Friday, March 10, 2006 In Ireland, where the 1840’s potato famine killed a million people and made millions more homeless, why are hundreds of Irish men and women protesting against the new genetically engineered blight-proof potato? Can the modern Irish have forgotten the biggest disaster in their history? A million Irish men, women, and children starved because the late blight disease suddenly destroyed the vital potato crop. Millions more Irish lost their homes and farms and wandered the roads, subsisting on tree bark, weeds, and whatever else they could find. One million Irish emigrants boarded what became known as a “coffin ship,” sailing ships too often infested with typhus and cholera, fleeing Ireland for the hope of better lives in the United States and Canada. Even today, Ireland is dotted with “famine cottages”—little two-room stone houses, whose thatched roofs have long since rotted away. Their walls still stand, however, as grim reminders of one of history’s biggest crop disease disasters. Ever since 1845, plant breeders have been urgently seeking blight-resistant potatoes. Potatoes produce more food value per acre than any other crop, and they are rich sources of vitamin C and other micronutrients. Countries such as China, Bangladesh, and Rwanda in the Central African highlands have become more and more dependent on potatoes to feed their increasingly dense populations. But the late blight has continued to worsen. Chemical sprays have been less and less successful as the blight acquired resistance, and a virulent new strain of the blight appeared in 1994. American potato growers have recently had to spray their potato crops as many as 12 times per season. In warmer climates like Mexico, up to 25 sprays have been needed. Organic farmers have had to use heavy applications of toxic copper sulfate, preventively. For the past 50 years, a genetic solution has been in hand—but unusable. A gene for late blight resistance had been found by plant explorers in a wild Mexican potato relative, Solanum bulbocastanum, which apparently evolved along with the late blight microorganism. Unfortunately, plant breeders could never cross-breed the wild potato relative’s blight resistance into a domestic potato.

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Many people assume the potato blight went away. Well it did not go away and in fact is worse now than ever before! Now to answer the question. "Why Would the Irish Protest Famine-Proof Potatoes?" Answer: Ignorance knows no era, epoch, national, racial, or ethnic bounds. Humans today are ever bit as ignorant and hide bound superstitious as they were 2000, 1000, or 500 years ago. The recent reaction over cartoons proves me correct.