Irish Geography
Vol. 43, No. 2, July 2010, 119134
The potato in Ireland’s evolving agrarian landscape and agri-food system
Alice D’Arcy*
Department of Geography and School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences,
University College Cork
The scale, structure and impacts of food systems in Ireland have changed
dramatically over the last several hundred years, predominantly since the
mechanisation and intensification of farming began in the late nineteenth century.
The transformation of the potato production system, which for the preceding
century had dominated the Irish diet, was particularly dramatic. The time from
the introduction of the potato c. 1600 to its catastrophic decline in the mid-1800s,
represented a period of Irish agriculture distinctly at odds with what came before
and after, involving as it did complete dependence on a single crop system.
Despite devastating crop losses suffered in the nineteenth century and particularly
associated with the Great Famine, the potato remained agriculturally significant
in Ireland. From the late 1800s onwards the system underwent a transition
towards the highly mechanised, specialised, intensive and market-oriented agriindustrial food systems of today. This new high inputhigh output system was
accompanied by an expansion in environmental impacts extending from local to
global scales. This article addresses that transition in the role and impacts of the
potato in Ireland, from its introduction to the present day.
Keywords: potato; impacts; agri-food system; Great Famine
Introduction
The potato has played a hugely important role in the Irish agrarian landscape since
its introduction c. 1600. In an otherwise historically mixed agricultural landscape, the
introduction of the potato began a period of almost complete dependence on a single
crop system. Driven and compounded by the particular social, political and
demographic conditions of the time, this period of dependence continued until the
widespread and devastating failures of the crop and resulting Great Famine of 1845
1847. As a result, the potato has had hugely significant impacts on Irish agrarian
history, diet, population, landscape and culture. Such was the level of the dependence
on the potato and its infiltration into Irish culture that it has remained agriculturally
and culturally significant in Ireland. From the late nineteenth century onwards,
potato production and distribution underwent a process of transition, accompanied
by significant changes in the realm of consumption and in other social and cultural
practices. Consequently, not only does the potato perform a different role in dietary
behaviour today, but it has become associated with other concerns, including those
regarded as environmental in nature and operating at a variety of different scales.
This article traces the transition of the potato system from its introduction to the
present, addressing some of the major impacts of that system over time, from its role
*Email: [email protected]
ISSN 0075-0778 print/ISSN 1939-4055 online
# 2010 Geographical Society of Ireland
DOI: 10.1080/00750778.2010.515195
http://www.informaworld.com
120 A. D’Arcy
as significant driver of population, diet and culture in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries to its less dominant but nevertheless relevant role in the Irish agri-food
system of today.
Ireland before the potato
With the exception of the period of overwhelming dominance of the potato (c. 1650
1850), Ireland has had a predominantly mixed agricultural landscape. From the
arrival of the first farmers into a largely forested Ireland in the late Mesolithic/early
Neolithic period right through to the seventeenth century, the major human-induced
changes to the landscape have been in the form of settlement and the development
and control of a mixed agricultural system featuring dairy, cattle and tillage farming
(Molloy and O’Connell 1988, Sexton 1988, Neeson 1997, Mitchell and Ryan 1998,
O’Connell and Molloy 2001, Feehan 2003). The farming systems that developed were
strongly linked to a persistent cultural affinity for, and deference to, the importance
of land, and the ancestral and familial control thereof. They frequently featured
aspects of communal land/farm management including rundale or open field systems
in which fields were communally held but individual strips worked independently and
rotated annually, and ‘creaghting’ or ‘booleying’ which involved families taking their
cattle to the mountains to graze for several months (Salaman 1949, Mitchell and
Ryan 1998, Feehan 2003). Certain aspects of these traditions persist to this day
(Buttimer 2001, Feehan 2003), in particular the preference for familial ownership,
control of, and connection to, land. These continue to play an important role in the
scale and structure of the family farm-oriented agri-food system in Ireland.
The introduction of the potato to the Irish agricultural system c. 1600 came at a
tumultuous time in Ireland’s history. It followed a series of colonisations all of which
had attempted to restructure the political, social and agricultural systems, impose
alternative land and class division systems, eliminate native social and cultural
practices, and replace the ‘backward’ Irish agricultural methods with increasingly
intensive, enclosed and trade-oriented farming (Salaman 1949, Ryan 1959a, b,
Mitchell and Ryan 1998, Feehan 2003). Fierce resistance to these impositions was
maintained (Donnelly 1978, Bartlett 1991, Ó Tuathaigh 2007) but by the end of the
sixteenth century it has been claimed that the Irish population had been
dispossessed, the landscape ravaged, much of the livestock killed, the remaining
woodlands destroyed, and the culture and spirit of the people broken (Salaman 1949,
Neeson 1997, Mitchell and Ryan 1998). The largely dispossessed agrarian population
was forced to live on increasingly contracted holdings. Irish social traditions,
including land subdivision among offspring, early marriage and large families
(Mokyr and Ó Gráda 1984, Guinnane 1994, Birdwell-Pheasant 1998) had not been
successfully eliminated. Thus, as more and more people lived on less and less land,
both the capacity of the land to provide and the people’s ability to live off it were
stretched to breaking point. While the wealthy and powerful were enjoying an
increasingly diverse array of meats, grains and vegetables from their more enclosed
and intensive farms, as well as increasing international trade, the diet of the poorer
majority was becoming increasingly impoverished and monotonous. Most people
were subsisting almost exclusively on a diet of oats and dairy produce (Salaman
1949, Lucas 1960). It was into this oppressive situation of imposed land, class and
agricultural systems that the potato was introduced.
Irish Geography 121
The ‘Irish’ potato
Sources generally agree that potatoes made their first appearance in Europe in the
late sixteenth century, with the introduction of Solanum tuberosum from the South
American High Andes (Salaman 1949, Hawkes and Francisco-Ortega 1993,
Zuckerman 1998, UNFAO 2008). The Spanish conquistadores are thought to be
responsible for bringing potatoes from South America, via the Spanish Islands, to
Spain and mainland Europe, and subsequently to Ireland. McNeill (1949) and
O’Riordan (1998) maintain that the reference in Ireland to the potato in those times
as An Spáinneach Geal (the white or kind-hearted Spaniard), the contemporary trade
links between Spain and Ireland (particularly Munster), as well as the subsequent
distribution of the potato, support the theory that they were introduced from Spain
and/or by a Spaniard. Whether or not the introduction was intentional is unclear.
There is little evidence as to the initial means and extent of distribution, whether
championed by the English landlords, the native Irish, or both. The early
distribution was primarily in southern areas, spreading later to parts of Leinster
and eventually to the rest of the country, so much so that by the late seventeenth
century it was referred to in written records as the ‘Irish potato’ (Salaman 1949,
O’Riordan 1998). The Irish became the first Europeans to accept potatoes as a field
crop (in the seventeenth century) and the first to embrace it as a staple (in the
eighteenth century). Prior to this the Spanish, and most upper class Europeans,
associated the potato with the lower classes, and apparently held other bizarre and
unfounded beliefs about the ‘evils’ of various root vegetables and members of the
nightshade family (Zuckerman 1998, p. 17). In Ireland, however, potatoes were
quickly accepted and liked by both rich and poor and, fuelled by the contemporary
socio-economic, political and agricultural situations, became an important and
dominant part of the food system in a very short space of time.
Some impacts of the introduction of the potato
Following their introduction, potatoes were quickly and extensively adopted. The
addition of a crop that was highly nutritious, palatable, relatively easy to grow and
store, and which required little fuel to process or cook, was warmly welcomed.
Potatoes fared better in wet conditions and in a wider variety of soils than grain
crops. Inputs were cheap, locally available, and largely renewable; the ground was
worked with specially adapted spades (loys), the crop fertilised with manure and/or
seaweed transported from reasonably close-by on horse and cart, the same means
which was used to transport the products to market (Salaman 1949, Feehan 2003,
Bell and Watson 2009). The potato also fitted remarkably well into the lifestyle of the
majority of rural dwellers. The reality of daily life and the strong emphasis on
tradition made the holding of land a major issue for the Irish. In many cases the loss
of land by a peasant, no matter how small a plot, meant the loss of an occupation, a
food source and a place to live. Land provided a degree of food security that was
absent from the life of the landless labourer (Bell and Watson 2009). Most people
kept a few hens and a pig or two on their plots for both food and profit. Records
from the 1770s also suggest that while there was generally a low level of vegetable
cultivation in the country, most cottiers had a cabbage patch and grew some turnip
for animal fodder (Sexton 1988). The result of the introduction of the potato in the
122 A. D’Arcy
seventeenth century was, consequently, to have a cascading effect not only on the
human diet but also on much of the agri-food system. Potato crops provided food for
more people (and animals) from less land than other crops, thus reducing the
consumption of potential cash crops. Potato production also fitted well into the
widely used conacre system (Salaman 1949, Beames 1975, CSO 1997, Bell and
Watson 2009), in which farmers would rent small plots of land (often between one
quarter and two acres) for a single crop season. This generally fulfilled two vital
roles: ‘it ensured a supply of food throughout the year, assuming the crop did not fail,
and it provided employment for surplus labour in an economy where other
alternatives were severely limited’ (Beames 1975, p. 353). However, the often
extortionate rents prevented any significant profits or progress being made by the
peasants. Potatoes also provided an alternate food crop for both fowl and pigs.
Records show that, following the introduction of potatoes, the pig population and
economy ballooned so much that by 1841 Young recorded a population of 1,412,813
pigs, commenting that in some areas there were ‘more pigs than human beings’ (cited
by Sexton 1988, p. 46).
Overall the introduction of the potato increased, temporarily at least, both food
security and independence for the peasants, and provided an extra source of income
(Salaman 1949, Mitchell and Ryan 1998, Zuckerman 1998). Despite the fact that
there was an expansion of agricultural trade at the time, making it the ‘corner-stone
of the Irish economy’ (Ó Tuathaigh 2007, p. 113), increasing demand and prices for
corn, dairy and beef exports meant that these commodities were for the most part
inaccessible luxuries, frequently grown purely as cash crops for sale. The majority of
the Irish population was locked into a stagnant system of subsistence agriculture,
increasingly dependent on the potato in an unsustainable land tenure situation with
entrenched class and cultural barriers. By the early 1800s the potato had become the
widespread staple food crop and the diet of the majority was almost exclusively
restricted to potatoes and dairy produce (Connell 1951, Cullen, 1968).
Boom and bust: population and potatoes
Despite the numerous hardships of the previous two centuries, the Irish population
was increasing in the early nineteenth century (Guinnane, 1994, after Mitchell, 1980;
Figure 1). This growth was due to a combination of factors: the economic benefits of
increasing agricultural and industrial trade (Ó Tuathaigh 2007), decreasing mortality
rates, early age of marriage and high fecundity, improved government provision of
poor relief in times of famine/hardship, and quite likely increasing food security and
nutrition associated with potatoes (Salaman 1949, Connell 1951, Cullen 1968, Mokyr
and Ó Gráda 1984). The rising population would also have necessitated an increase
in food supply, and thus further dependence on potatoes. Reportedly around one
third of the population was largely reliant on the potato, consuming between 2.2 and
6.4 kg per day depending on age, gender and availability (Keating 1998, Ó Gráda
2004, Ó Tuathaigh 2007). The production of potatoes as a crop and food source had
boomed since its first appearance as a field crop in Wicklow in the 1640s to its role as
the staple in the diet of the majority by the early 1800s (O’Riordan 1998, Zuckerman
1998; Figure 2). The geographical distribution of potato production was equally
widespread, with production in all parts of the country, largely for own use and the
domestic market. Around half of total production was for human consumption,
Irish Geography 123
Figure 1. Population of Ireland and England from 1700 to 1975.
Source: Guinnane 1994 after Mitchell 1980
some 35% went to livestock, and less than 1% was exported. The rest was saved as
seed and/or culled/rotted in storage (Ó Gráda 2004). While exact figures are not
available prior to the collection of official returns in 1847, a compilation of various
pre-1847 references and partial records (Bourke 1959) provides reasonably detailed
information from the time. Figure 3a and 3b show the counties with the highest
density of potato production per thousand acres of crops and pasture, and the
number of persons per hundred acres of potatoes, concentrated in a wedge from the
northwest to the South coast (including Galway and Mayo, Tipperary, Clare, Cork
and Waterford).
The introduction of the potato undoubtedly provided an alternative, if
predominantly subsistence level, crop. However there were warnings at the time,
Area under potatoes in Ireland c. 1600 to 2008
1000
2500
900
2000
700
600
1500
500
400
1000
300
200
'000ac potatoes
'000ac potatoes
'000ha potatoes
800
500
100
8
20
0
18
4
18 5
4
18 7
48
18
5
18 8
68
18
7
18 8
8
18 8
9
19 8
0
19 8
1
19 8
2
19 8
3
19 8
4
19 8
58
19
6
19 8
78
19
8
19 8
98
25
0
17
c.
16
00
0
Year
Figure 2. Area under potatoes in ’000 hectares (left axis) and ’000 acres (right axis) in Ireland
from c. 1600 to 2008.
Sources: Keating 1998; CSO 1997, 2006, 2009
124 A. D’Arcy
Figure 3a. and b. Pre-Famine (1845) distributions of potato production and population
3a. Acres of potatoes per 1000 acres of crops and pasture. 3b. No. of persons per 100 acres of
potatoes Counties with the highest density are shaded in both cases
Source: Bourke 1959
including that of Thomas Malthus in his 1798 Essay on the Principle of Population,
that the significant rise in population rise and its relationship to the increasing
dominance of the potato was pushing the population ‘beyond the industry and
present resources of the country’, and that the lower classes were bound to suffer
most in the case of a systems failure (O’Riordan 1998). Although the extent of the
role of the potato in population rise is debated (Mokyr and Ó Gráda 1984, Guinnane
1994, O’Gráda 2004), Malthus’ predicted outcome is not.
Potato production and population levels were closely related throughout the
seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, with particularly distinct peaks followed by
rapid declines obvious around 1845 when a blight caused by the fungus Phytophtera
infestans led to recurring and widespread failure of the potato crops (Ó Gráda 2004).
None of the potato varieties of the time, including the ‘Black’, the ‘Apple’, the ‘Cup’
and the ubiquitous ‘Lumper’, which by 1840 comprised almost 90% of potatoes
grown (Keating 1998), had much if any resistance to the disease. The resounding
and widespread failure of the major subsistence crop over the next few years
precipitated the Great Famine of 184548, resulting in the deaths of around one
million people due to starvation and disease, the emigration of over two million
people between 1845 and 1855, and the evictions of nearly 70,000 families between
1846 and 1851. The effects were felt countrywide but most severely by the people and
regions which were most dependent on the potato (Keating 1998, Ó Gráda 2004, Ó
Tuathaigh 2007), i.e. those shaded areas illustrated in Figure 3a and 3b. The events
had devastating psychological and sociological impacts on the survivors, both
Irish Geography 125
individually and as a people. Along with having to face the emotional trauma of the
loss of family and friends, the survivors were left to endure the consequences of
massive social dislocation, explosion in crime rates, and food rioting (Geary 1999,
Ó Gráda 2004). Lucas (1960, p. 1) describes the introduction of the potato as:
an ethnographic disaster, leading to a fearfully over-simplified existence for a
considerable fraction of the population with the consequent disappearance of many
of the activities associated with the older methods of food production and a quite
abnormal truncation of many aspects of Irish rural life in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The scale of production in terms of both geography and food production ensured
that the social and dietary impacts of both the rise and fall of the potato crop were
deeply felt country-wide, particularly among the rural poor. The introduction and
subsequent dominance of the potato, combined with the social, political and
demographic conditions of the time, had led to a very high level of dependence on a
seriously pressurised and largely mono-cultural food system. What followed was a
catastrophic collapse of the system, devastation of the population, and profound
effects on all aspects of life in Ireland, and beyond.
Potatoes after the Famine
The worst blight-affected years saw a dramatic decrease in the area of potatoes
planted (Figure 2) from a total production area of almost 900,000 ha at the peak of
production in 1845 to just over 100,000 ha in 1847. The levels increased again once
the blight had subsided and ‘clean’ seed could be sourced, but to less than half the
area of production at the peak. From the late 1860s onwards the area of potato
production went into steady decline. While there was an overall shift away from
subsistence agriculture, large areas of the west, which had been most seriously
affected by the Famine in terms of population decrease and which were generally
poorer and more commercially isolated, remained substantially more dependent on
the potato than the east (Salaman 1949). Production areas contracted countrywide,
with the areas of highest density remaining largely in the west until the late twentieth
century (Bourke 1959, CSO 1997; Figure 4a and 4b). The consequences of the
Famine forced significant changes, not only in potato production but in the whole
agri-food system in Ireland.
Following the Famine, the population continued to decline due to the rising age
of marriage, decline in marriage and birth rates, continuing emigration (Mokyr and
Ó Gráda 1984) and the migration of many surviving rural labourers to expanding
urban areas. ‘Within a generation about a quarter of the country changed hands’
(Keating 1998, p. 73), subdivision of farms was brought to an end, plots were
gradually consolidated and overall the number of farm holdings was dramatically
reduced (Table 1). The result was a 50% decline in the overall crop area from around
1850 to 1900. Accelerated by the repeal of the Corn Laws and the conversion of
newly consolidated farms to grazing (Salaman 1949), agriculture moved towards a
much more permanent grass and livestock focused system, particularly in the east of
the country. Outputs of grain, potatoes and livestock in the early nineteenth century
were roughly equal, while after the Famine the area of potato and grain production
decreased and livestock increased (CSO 1997, Keating 1998, Feehan 2003; Table 2).
126 A. D’Arcy
Figure 4a. and b. Acres of potatoes per thousand acres of crops and pasture in 1845
and 1951. Shaded areas indicate ten counties with highest density of production (1 acre 0.404685 ha)
Source: Adapted from Bourke 1959
Overall increasing urbanisation, infrastructural developments and redistribution
of the population led to a restructuring of the agri-food system towards increased
emphasis on intensification and trade. Increases in manufacturing and service
industries provided opportunities for non-agricultural employment so that by 1861
less than half the population was employed in agriculture (Salaman 1949, Feehan
2003). Rail transport improved, the presence and number of shops increased as did
income levels, while levels of self-sufficiency decreased. All of these factors increased
the availability and diversity of food facilitating and/or necessitating significant
dietary changes and agri-food system changes. To some extent there was a return to
the Irish diet before the dominance of the potato; that is to a more varied diet
including grains, dairy produce, meat, vegetables, fruit and eggs, as well as potatoes.
Table 1.
Post-Famine changes in number (in 000s) and size of farm holdings.
Year
1845
Size of holding
B2.02 ha
15 acres
2.02 to 6.07 ha 515 acres
6.07 ha
15acres
1ha 2.47ac
Total
1847
1851
1910
No. of farm holding
182
311
277
770
Source: Keating, 1998 after Bourke and Lee
140
270
321
730
88
192
290
570
62
154
304
520
Irish Geography 127
Table 2.
Numbers of selected livestock (’000) in the State, June 18471907.
Year
1847
1867
1887
1907
’000 Cattle
’000 Cows
’000 Sheep
2005
n/a
2046
2996
1199
4546
3412
1096
3117
3889
1247
3425
Source: CSO 1997
The overall food system, in the eastern areas particularly, became more diverse and
secure, in that people were far less dependent on a single food source; more complex in
terms of numbers of links in individual food chains, increasing distances between
producers and consumers; and more commercial as numbers of producers decreased
and consumers increased, necessitating an increase in food trade. However,
restructuring of the agri-food system was not geographically even. High levels of
depopulation and land abandonment particularly in the west were followed by an
increase in sheep and livestock farming in those less fertile areas. In contrast, the south
and east of the country moved towards larger and more intensive arable and dairy
systems. These trends were largely set to continue and intensify over the following
century (Lafferty et al. 1999). Potato farming followed only to an extent. Production
was maintained at low levels in most areas of the country, while pockets of more
intensive commercial production developed in the east and south. The remaining
higher density areas of production in the economically and infrastructurally isolated
west remained a significant part of the food and agriculture system for many years, but
increasingly struggled to be commercially viable in the new market-oriented system.
A new era in Irish agriculture
Once the devastation and upheaval of the mid-nineteenth century had subsided and
the agri-food system restructured, the ‘Agricultural Revolution’ which had been
underway in Britain for many years slowly began to impact on farming in Ireland.
A series of developments in the late nineteenth century went a long way towards
progressing agriculture in Ireland, including the Land Acts, the formation of the
co-operative movement in the 1880s, the formation of the Irish Agricultural
Organising Society in 1894 and the Department of Agriculture and Technical
Instruction in 1899. Agricultural wages increased, technology, education and farm
management techniques improved, a degree of optimism was returning, and the
country was becoming a nation of small farmers (Salaman 1949, Mitchell and Ryan
1998). Further emphasis on enclosure, nutrient management, crop rotation, selective
breeding, and mechanisation of farming became prominent. Between 1850 and 1900
the first chemical pest control agents had arrived and were tried in Ireland, while the
amount of agricultural machinery had roughly doubled (Keating 1998, Feehan
2003). Alongside these changes, a whole new set of issues came to the fore in relation
to the environmental impacts of high-input farming systems. While the social and
dietary dependence on potatoes had subsided for the majority of the population,
ongoing changes to the agrarian landscape and culture towards a more mechanised
and intensified agri-food system would continue to impact socially on the Irish
population, and in turn add to growing environmental impacts.
128 A. D’Arcy
Over the course of the twentieth century, the number of people working on the
land and growing their own food continued to dramatically decrease, as did the
number of holdings and the land area in food production (CSO 1997). Consolidation,
standardisation and specialisation led to landscape level changes such as the removal
of ‘distinctive settlement features associated with rundale’, while ‘farming systems,
implements, crops and livestock became less regionally distinctive and the farming
economy became increasingly tied in to international markets’ (Bell and Watson
2009, p. 32). Pressure mounted on farmers to cut costs and increase yields to compete
with domestic and international agri-trade, or to abandon farming. The more
intensive systems required bigger markets in urban centres and better trading routes.
A much more intensive and fossil fuel-based distribution system developed to
facilitate these developments. Potato farming was part of this restructuring and
development process. Despite the contraction of the sector as a whole a number of
those remaining in the business embraced these developments and commercial
potato farming was to become one of the most highly mechanised, high input
farming systems in the country.
Potatoes in the contemporary foodscape
Although potatoes have played a far less dominant role in Ireland in the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries than they have done in the past, they
maintain a significant role in the contemporary Irish agri-food system. Potatoes,
particularly the high dry matter varieties, remain a cultural and dietary preference
for many Irish people and despite their very small share (B1%) of the Utilizable
Agricultural Land in production (12,200 ha in conventional production and 114 ha
in certified organic production; DAF 2006) they remain the ‘most important field
grown horticultural food crop in Ireland’ (Bord Glas 2001, p. 3). The domestic
market maintain a high level of self sufficiency in potatoes, and Ireland retains the
third highest levels of potato consumption in the EU15, at an average of 163 kg per
person per annum, which is twice the EU average (DAFRD 2001). The sector has,
however, come under serious pressure from a combination of dietary and lifestyle
changes and increased competition within and without the sector (McGlynn 2007);
agricultural and environmental policies (Hennessy 2007); and economic factors.
Intensive conventional production has become regionally concentrated in a few areas
of the south, southeast, and midlands; Cork, Wexford, around Louth/Dublin/Meath,
and also Donegal where potato seed production is dominant. A small number of
growers in these areas provide the bulk of potatoes on the market (Bord Bia/DAF
2005). There are currently as few as one thousand registered growers and packers in
the Republic of Ireland (DAF 2009). Smaller-scale commercial production continues
in all but two counties, Longford and Leitrim, but the sector continues to decline in
terms of area of production, geographical distribution and numbers of growers (Bord
Bia/DAF 2005). The area of conventional potato production in 2004 is shown in
Figure 5 (Bord Bia/DAF 2005), in relation to the areas of production in 1850
(Bourke 1959) to illustrate the change in the scale of potato production in Ireland
over this time period. Figure 5 also highlights areas of commercial organic potato
production. This is a very small but increasing sector with only about 30 registered
potato growers (DAF 2002), which has been increasing slowly since the beginnings of
the organic movement in Ireland in 1981 (Organic Europe 2009). It is characterised
Irish Geography 129
Figure 5. Potato production area in the Republic of Ireland in 1845 and 2004.
Sources: Bourke, 1959; DAF, 2002; Bord Bia/DAF 2005
by overall lower and more restricted inputs, lower intensity, generally lower yields
(D’Arcy et al. 2010), and smaller areas of production, than the conventional
production system.
The majority of potatoes grown commercially in Ireland are sold as unprocessed
ware potatoes in the domestic market. Compared to arable, dairy and livestock
farming the sector is consequently less tied to international export markets. There is,
however, some pressure on domestic growers to maintain the domestic market at the
currently low level of imports. The system as a whole has become highly intensified,
mechanised and commercialised. Conventional potato crops have one of the highest
nutrient input levels (in kg/ha) and chemical pesticide application levels of all the
arable crops in Ireland (PCS 2004, Coulter et al. 2005). The potato is also one of the
most intense crops in terms of number and type of farm operations involved and
level of soil disturbance in production (D’Arcy et al. 2010). The distribution network
for potatoes is now vast, with potatoes being transported far greater distances more
frequently than in the past (unpublished data) at a high energy cost, adding to the
energy demands of production and storage. Alongside these developments yields per
area have multiplied. At the peak of the dominance of the potato crop in 184546
around 850,000 hectares were in production and the average yield was 14 tonnes per
hectare (t/ha). By 2005 the average yield had increased to 34.7 t/ha but the area of
production was down to 12,200 ha (CSO 2009).
Impacts of the contemporary system
The impacts of the contemporary potato production system in Ireland are evident on
very different scales from those of the nineteenth century. Potatoes are now one small
130 A. D’Arcy
part of a diverse and complex food system, on which there is a relatively minor
degree of dependence in terms of dietary requirements, livelihoods, land and cultural
traditions. There are without doubt ongoing socio-cultural impacts of the changed
structure of potato farming. As with all specialised mechanised systems, it entails ‘the
replacement of people by machines, diminishes the variety of local skills, erodes local
service provisions and ultimately undermines social vitality’ (Buttimer and Jenkins
2001, p. 250). However, some of the greatest potential impacts and threats to the
sustainability of the current agri-food systems, including that of the potato, lie in the
environmental sphere. The current high-inputhigh-output, market-driven system
has a correspondingly high price to pay in terms of a wide range of increasingly
globally relevant impacts.
Since the late 1960s there has been an increasing recognition of the environmental
and ecological effects of intensive farming systems, the accelerating depletion of
abiotic and biotic resources, the transboundary nature of many of the impacts and
the necessity for measurement, regulation and management thereof. Table 3 and
Figure 6 highlight some of the major potential environmental impacts of potato
production and distribution systems today, and the scales at which they are relevant.
Conventional and, to a lesser extent, organic systems have become increasingly
characteristic of the ‘vertical integration of Irish farms within a progressively more
globalised agri-industrial complex that includes upstream industries of agri-chemical
and farm machinery manufacturers, and downstream industries such as food
processing, distribution, and retail businesses’ (Crowley et al 2008, p. 10).
Organic and other non-conventional systems to some degree represent a backlash
or attempted alternative to some aspects of this ‘globalised agri-industrial complex’
in terms of levels and sources of inputs, production methods and attitudes to
production, environmental and social issues around the connections between people
and their food, health and environment. However, they too are, to varying extents,
‘dependent on suppliers of external inputs such as farm equipment; financial
institutions; food processors and retailers to purchase their expanding output’
(Crowley et al. 2008, p. 10). As a result, the dynamics of the agri-food systems in
general and the potato systems in particular, from the choice and sourcing of inputs
to distribution and marketing of outputs are now more complex, and the
environmental impacts more globally-relevant. The ‘holistic’ measurement of these
impacts necessitated the development of internationally recognised (ISO 2006:
14040, 14044) ‘life cycle’ or ‘cradle to grave’ approaches to enabling the estimation of
the cumulative environmental impacts resulting from all stages in a product life cycle,
often including impacts not considered in more traditional analyses (e.g. raw
material extraction, various stages of production, material transportation, ultimate
product disposal, etc.) (Bauman and Tillman 2004, USEPA 2006). The specifics of
this process as applied to a subset of the conventional and organic production and
distribution systems in Ireland are detailed in D’Arcy et al. (2010) and will be further
described in future publications.
Conclusions
Despite the vast changes in the political, agricultural, dietary, cultural and
demographic landscape since the introduction of the potato, it has maintained an
important place in the Irish agri-food system. The significance of the impacts of the
Table 3.
Categorisation of some potential impacts of agri-food systems today.
Broad impact
categories
Resource Use
Human Health
Ecological
consequences
More specific impact categories
Details of potential impacts
Source: Compiled from Baumann and Tillman 2004
Irish Geography 131
Input related impact categories
Use of abiotic resources
materials & energy use: depletion of resources
Use of biotic resources
use of land, soil, water etc: depletion/degradation of resources & life support functions
Output related impact categories
Toxicological & other impacts
Adverse affects of chemicals/other substances on human health-e.g. direct poisoning/
indirect impacts on health/food/water supply
Health impacts in working environment e.g. exposure to pesticides/chemicals, high risk m achinery etc
Global warming
Green House Gases (GHGs): climate change: multiple impacts
Stratospheric ozone depletion
CFC, halon emissions leading to upper atmosphere ozone holes: dam age to plants, hum
ans, built environment
Acidification
SO2, NOx, HCl, NH3 emissions cause acidification of water bodies/soil, acid rain,
increased leaching: dam age to fish, vegetation, buildings
Eutrophication
Excess nutrient inputs leading to shifts in species com position, changes in biological
productivity
Photo-oxidant formation
emissions of NOx, HCs: lower atmosphere air pollution: impacts on human health &
vegetation
Ecotoxicity
e.g. adverse effects of chemicals/substances directly on species / indirectly in soil/air/
water
Habitat loss / impacts on biodiversity
Change/loss of habitats/species/ community com position/ life support functions
132 A. D’Arcy
Figure 6.
Illustration of scales of various environmental impacts described in Table 3.
system in terms of food provision, effects on population, culture and livelihoods
(both positive and negative) have dropped dramatically since the nineteenth century,
due to the decline in population and dependence on the potato, combined with the
increased diversity and availability of food, complexity of the agri-food system, and
other factors. However the nature of both agri-food systems and environmental
impacts today is such that ‘local realities are now touched by influences emanating
from national, continental and even global scales’ and ‘one is more and more aware
of the fact that choices made in one region bear implications for other regions’
(Buttimer, 2001, p. 2). The production area and number of growers are a very small
fraction of the levels at the peak of production in 1845 and the sector makes up a very
small fraction of the agricultural economy. However the persistent popularity of the
potato, combined with the intensive and transboundary nature of the system and its
impacts, means that the potato maintains an important role.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the Environmental Protection Agency (STRIVE programme) for
funding the overall project; Sustainable Food Systems: An evaluation of the potato supply
chain in Ireland using Life Cycle Assessment. I would also like to thank my supervisors
Dr. Colin Sage, Department of Geography, UCC, and Professor John O’Halloran, School of
Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, UCC, as well as the anonymous referees for
their input.
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