How would you define Irish potato famine?

Answer 1

The Irish potato famine can be described as a time in the nineteenth century when there was a shortage of potato crops.

The Irish potato famine was a horrifying agricultural disaster, not just a shortage of potatoes!

For thousands of years the Irish (and most other Celtic tribes) had been great fishermen and the staple of their diet was fish from the Atlantic. But with the discovery of the New World the potato was introduced to Ireland. Farming potatoes was much easier and cheaper than maintaining large fishing ships, the nets, etc., so gradually over the generations fishing was virtually abandoned by the Irish people and the staple of their diet became the potato.

By selecting the best potatoes to grow over the years they narrowed the genetic diversity of their crop (a potato variety called the Irish Lumper) until when the potato blight (a fungus like organism) attacked in 1840s crops were nearly entirely wiped out, becoming a foul smelling mush long before harvest. It was not possible for them to suddenly return to fishing.

Unfortunately at the time while Ireland was growing sufficient other crops to feed everyone, the English (who ruled the country) demanded that it all continue to be exported to them as had been done in the past.

Note: the failure of potato crops that lead to the Irish potato famine was not limited to Ireland. It originated in Mexico the spread through the US before jumping the Atlantic aboard clipper ships, after arriving in Ireland it spread through England and all of Europe. But in those other places there was wider variety of potatoes thus offering more resistance to the blight than the Irish Lumper did, also the laws and culture of the other locations permitted switching to alternate foods and prevented a famine elsewhere but in Ireland no such options were available resulting in massive famine.