Chasing Potatoes
A cheerful article in Minnesota outlines the history of the potato, in how it impacted on the populations of Europe and America, though with an especial focus on the Irish and the plains states like Kansas:
Born due to potatoes, fed by potatoes, and pushed on by the need for new land on which to grow potatoes, immigrants by the millions funneled through Ellis Island and spilled across the American wilderness
And, give or take some initial ritualistic character-building discrimination, everything went swimmingly.
Plentiful rains in the 1880s produced a dangerous myth: “The rain follows the plow.” According to the theory, if you broke up the plains of the Dakotas, Nebraska and Kansas, rain would come automatically. Tillage would change the climate.
But it didn’t. The rains stopped, scrapping that theory and leaving the prairie over-populated like Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia from which people had fled. The really western towns died completely but some, like up in Minnesota where the weather was less dry survived, and indeed thrived as communities centered on populations of 1,000 with many more working the surrounding hinterland.
But in this happy story, as you know if you take a trip through small town America, the countryside emptied of people, the Main Streets then died, and now people buy huge sacks of potatoes from enormous stores, thirty miles from their homes, and they need very big vehicles to carry those spuds home to their kitchens.
Possibly there’s a lesson in there for all of us, but it’s just making me hungry. Read it all.
See Also:
• Cycling Across America: Small Towns Maybe?
• Seed Saving Would Have Prevented Irish Famine
• The Corned Beef Irish Thing
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