An Gorta Mór: Unsound & Impractical Solutions

15/11/2024
November 1845: The Scientific Commission returned from investigating the scope of the blight, projecting it would be widespread. They then released their first pamphlet entitled: "Advice Concerning The Potato Crop" aimed at preserving what was previouly harvested. The instructions were complicated, not to mention that those intended to benefit from them were largely illiterate. Regardless, they read as follows:

 

"Mark out on the ground a space six feet wide and as long as you please. Dig a sallow trench two feet wide all around and throw the mould upon the space; then level it and cover it with a floor of turf sods, set on their edges. On this sift or spread very thinly, the dry mixtures, or any other dry materials described below and which you may call the packing stuff. Also, get some dry slack lime, and dust all the potatoes with it as well as you can. Then put one row of turf sods, laid flat, on top of the floor, all around the sides, so as to perform a broad edge, and within this, spread the dry potatoes, mixed well with packing stuff, so as not to touch one another. When you have covered the floor in this manner, up to the top of the sods, lay another row of sods all around the first."

Who would explain this procedure to the tenantry? Certainly not the landlords whose relationship with their tenants was strained if not non-existent. Local Clergy were literate, but weren't farmers. Nonetheless the responsibility to interpreting the instructions fell to them as well as explaining the procedure to the tenants.

Strict adherence would be difficult for farmers in a cashless agricultural economy as purchase of supplies was required. But all of this proved futile as the recommended procedure utterly failed to prevent the fungus from quickly infecting the previously healthy crop.

A second pamphlet was released shortly thereafter entitled "how To Save The Value of Every Bad Potato" which described a procedure of grating infected potatoes, then repeatedly rinsing grated material until it was rendered into pulp which could in turn be cooked on a skillet or used as a starch for use in other dishes. Again this might require cash outlay for materials, most notably a grater which might cost as much as 5 shillings, more than the average farmer could afford.

In both cases, the press skewered the Scientific Commission for their obvious lack of familiarity with potato farming and the impractical nature of of their "advice" - not to mention that the advice proffered was unsound, neither saving a healthy crop or salvaging a diseased crop.

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