The Withholding of the Green: The Irish Potato Blight was Perpetrated by the One Percent

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Part of the Zinn Education Project: Ireland's holocaust, The Great Potato Famine, affected only the potato—during the worst famine years, other food production was robust. Throughout the famine there was an abundance of food produced in Ireland, yet the landlords exported it to markets abroad.The school curriculum could and should ask students to reflect on the contradiction of starvation amidst plenty, on the ethics of food exports amidst famine. And it should ask why these patterns persist into our own time. More than a century and a half after the “Great Famine,” we live with similar, perhaps even more glaring contradictions.