How did the Irish Potato Famine end?

[purplecat]

Everyone is terribly coy about the subject. Wikipedia, for instance, just says it ended.

I've found one web site which attributes the end to the reduced population but that doesn't really make sense to me. The small-holding population of Ireland was dependent on the potato as its one crop and the blight, as I understand it, was pretty pervasive especially in any damp season (which are not uncommon in Ireland).

So it seems to me you need a diversification of the basic diet, possibly to other varieties of potato or some other change in farming practices that limits the spread of the blight. Or, you need sufficient population decrease that potato fields are widely enough apart that the blight has difficultly spreading - even assuming a 20% decrease in the population (based on census records which most historians seem to agree are inaccurate) that seems unlikely to me. Or some sort of mutation in the potato, or the disease, or climate change (given the blight was worse in damp years)?

Or am I misunderstanding how the blight works? I mean it came back consistently four years out of five, only letting up in one dry season so it seems pretty pervasive to me, not the sort of thing that burns itself out?

Anyone have any idea how the famine ended?

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Potato blight does not usually survive cold weather, and the Irish blight is usually attributed to the fact that the Irish grew a very restricted number of potato varieties.

It's not a disease that I'd expect to continue unstoppably forever: a cold winter, burn the infected foliage, perhaps fresh seed potatoes (maybe more blight-resistant ones) and away you go... Most potato growers get a bit of blight from time to time, it's always floating about.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

The first rule of Irish History always seems to be 'It was the fault of the feckin' English baastuds', so possibly the feckin' English baastuds decided to stop blighting the potato crop...

I'm wondering the same thing

[tyler richard (from livejournal.com)]

Honestly, I'm curious as well. It seems that the Famine just ended! We need someone to tell us. PLEASE!!!!