From the latest issue of Smithsonian Magazine: How The Potato Changed The World.
It reads like an episode of James Burke’s “Connections”, because the advent of potato farming in Europe led to the need for artificial fertilizers to replenish soil and international squabbles over Peru’s guano islands, and then also led to the development of chemical pesticides in response to the potato blight and potato beetle infestations. The blight, of course, led to the disastrous potato famines that depopulated Ireland in the 1840s and drove millions of Irish to emigrate to the United States. Great article.
