The Potato Famine

"In 1847, midway through the Great Irish Famine (1845–1849), a group of Native American Choctaws collected $710 (although many articles say the original amount was $170 after a misprint in Angie Debo's The Rise and Fall of the Choctaw Republic) and sent it to help starving Irish men, women and children. "It had been just 16 years since the Choctaw people had experienced the Trail of Tears, and they had faced starvation... It was an amazing gesture." Judy Allen, editor of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma's newspaper." (wiki source)

There are a few things to understand about the Irish Famine. It wasn't a famine. The potato crop failed,  and potatoes were the only food poor people grew for themselves. So when that crop failed, they all starved--many to death. Meanwhile, the country of Ireland exported more than enough food---beef, pork, and diary products, to feed everyone. There was no famine. There was forced starvation in service to the wealthy making money to feed the wealthy. Huge implications in this for our current world economy and coming climate change, especially with regard to Monsanto's intention to monopolize DNA and seeds. 

Had the poor cultivated goats and chickens, animals capable of foraging most of their calories, the poor may have still been poor and possibly hungry. But likely not started to death. Cultivated crops deplete the land but livestock, well managed, increase land fertility in perpetuity. 

I tell ya, this series about New York history keeps pointing to issues frighteningly current. The things they fought about 200 years ago are still not settled today. And notice, as John Steinbeck points out over and over, its always the poor---the people who have been there---who turn to help the poor. The wealthy don't concern themselves.