Throughout the 'fammine' Ireland was exporting significant ammounts of
grain grown by the Irish on English-owned estates to England. Sufficient
food was available in the in Ireland to avert the disaster, but attempts
to interfere with it's orderly and profitable shipment to England were
dealt with severely.
Today the developed nations (and the US in particular) enjoy the fruits
of an analogous set of relationships, but on a global scale. Export
agriculture, as practiced by transnational corporations in countries
where starvation is endemic, will eventually be judged and condemned
(one would hope) in much the same way we now view the 'potato fammine.'
On Fri, 13 Sep 1996, Rob Gordon wrote:
> > From almanac-request@amani.ces.ncsu.edu Fri Sep 13 10:23 MDT 1996
> > Date: Fri, 13 Sep 1996 9:05:00 -0400
> > From: "Marc Safley" <Marc.Safley@usda.gov>
> > Subject: Sustainable Spuds
> > To: sanet-mg@amani.ces.ncsu.edu (Receipt Notification Requested)
> > X400-Mts-Identifier: [ /P=GOV+USDA/A=ATTMAIL/C=US/ ; 32396F2E.7F18.191A.000 ]
> >
> > The recent and ongoing potato discussion brings several questions to
> > mind:
> >
> > 1. Could the Irish potato farmers controlled the blight if they had rotated
> > their crops with barley or oats or some other Gramineae?
> >
> > 2. If organic agriculture grew out of a reaction to the increased use of
> > agricultural chemicals in production systems, why can the description of
> > "organic" be applied to any system that relies on non-synthetic inputs?
> >
> > 3. Wasn't the Irish potato famine really an example of unsustainable
> > organic agriculture?
>
> 3.1 Didn't the Irish potato famine have a complex political dimension
> which contributed to the harshness of its memory and which is mistakenly
> overlooked when viewing the event as simply a failure of agriculture?
>
> >
> > 4. Wouldn't Bill Duesing make a great neighbor? I think so.
> >
> >
> > Marc Safley
> > marc.safley@usda.gov
> >
>