DISASTER - FaMINE

THE WORLD

DISASTERS

Disasters Famine

                It was a national tragedy. By the 1840s, half the people of Ireland depended on just one food - the potato. It gave them most of the nutrients they needed, and many had stopped planting any other cop. Then, without warning, a new disease infected the potato plants, wiping out the harvest for years, In the famine that followed, a million Irish people died of starvation and sickness.

Blighted land

        In the three generations from 1785 to 1845, the Irish population had grown by three times, rising from 208 to 8.3 million. When the blight struck, million died or emigrated, and the population plummeted. Even after the famine ended, poverty forced people to leave. Today, Ireland is home to only four million people.

Grim harvest

       Potato blight turned the crop into a black, evil-smelling slime. the disease, like the potato itself, came from America, reaching Ireland in the summer of 1845. It spread rapidly, until Ireland's reliance on this single 'miracle' crop-one man could plant enough plants to feed 40 people for a year - became a disaster.