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The potato had a large effect on European demographics and society, due to the fact that it yielded about three times the calories per acre of grain while also being more nutritive and growing in a wider variety of soils and climates, significantly improving agricultural production in the early modern era. Despite this it took a while to catch on.
The European potato failure was a food crisis caused by potato blight that struck Northern and Western Europe in the mid-1840s. The time is also known as the Hungry Forties . While the crisis produced excess mortality and suffering across the affected areas, particularly affected were the Scottish Highlands , with the Highland Potato Famine and ...
While initially a crop of the Indian subcontinent, the cultivation of sugar in the New World had significant effects on Spanish society. New World sugar cultivation added to the growing power of the Spanish and Portuguese economies while also increasing the popularity of slave labor (which had severe impacts on African, American, and European societies).
[1] [2] Unlike potatoes from Peru and Bolivia, the potatoes of Chiloé are adapted to the long summer days of the higher latitude region of southern Chile. [1] [3] After the disastrous European Potato Failure in the 1840s, strains originating in the Chiloé Archipelago replaced earlier potatoes of Peruvian origin in Europe. [3]
The introduction of the potato also brought about the first intensive use of fertilizer, in the form of guano imported to Europe from Peru, and the first artificial pesticide, in the form of an arsenic compound used to fight Colorado potato beetles. Before the adoption of the potato as a major crop, the dependence on grain had caused repetitive ...
The potato spread successfully in part due to the lessons learned after Great Famine of Ireland in which biologists and farmers created methods to prevent fungus induced blight. The second point, protecting genetic health, is especially important since such a large part of the global population is dependent on the potato for a stable diet.
The lithograph Sturm auf die Kartoffelstände shows an angry crowd attacking potato merchants. Vinzenz Katzler (1823–1882), around 1847 in Vienna. The "Potato revolution" (in German, Kartoffelrevolution) is the name given to the food riot that took place in the Prussian capital Berlin between April 21 and April 22/23, 1847.
The mid 18th century was marked by rapid adoption of the potato by various European countries, especially in central Europe, as various wheat famines demonstrated its value. The potato was grown in Ireland, a property of the English crown and common source of food exports, since the early 17th century and quickly spread so that by the 18th ...