What the Irish Potato Famine can teach Canada about food resilience

I’ve always liked potatoes. The variety I’m growing this summer is particularly special. With deep eyes and a knobby appearance, it’s certainly not the prettiest potato. And not everyone thinks it’s the most delicious. Its historical significance, however, is profound.

It’s called the Irish Lumper potato. The same variety that was hit by disease in 1845, initiating the Great Irish Potato Famine — a seven-year cataclysm which killed an estimated one million Irish people and spurred the emigration of another million. 

As a farmer and journalist with Irish heritage, I see the Lumper potato’s story as a chance to celebrate how far we’ve come in breeding more resilient crops and livestock. Most of us in Canada (though certainly not everyone) enjoy a level of food security unprecedented in human history. Crops with better genetics — greater resistance to insect pests, disease and drought — have been a major factor of this achievement. 

Now new, different tumultuous events are on the horizon, many driven by a changing and more volatile climate. I believe biotechnology can help us better weather this uncertain future, but it will require time, money and attention by governments and businesses. 

It will also require farmers and scientists to do a better job of discussing crop and animal science with a sometimes skeptical public, and all of us taking the risk of food insecurity more seriously. More made-in-Canada solutions addressing the unique conditions climate change will bring to this country and our dinner tables, would be a win for us all.

‘An Gorta Mór’: the Great Hunger

By the mid-19th century, poor Irish farmers and labourers were almost entirely dependent on the potato. The Irish Lumper was universally grown because it was highly productive, although some accounts say it was also more susceptible to certain diseases. 

One of those is a fungal blight called Phytophthora Infestans, or “infective plant destroyer.” After arriving on Ireland’s shores in 1845, the blight destroyed the Lumper’s foliage and rotted its tubers (the edible part of the crop). Starvation and disease quickly set in. The crisis deepened as prolonged cold and rainy weather allowed the pathogen to spread faster and relief schemes proved woefully inadequate. 

The period between 1845 and 1852 became known as “The Great Hunger,” an Gorta Mór in Irish. A branch of my paternal family emigrated to Canada from County Cork, one of the most afflicted areas, during the peak of the crisis. Their final resting place is a small churchyard not far from our current family farm in Essex County.

During a recent visit, I thought about the level of food insecurity they faced when Ireland’s over-reliance on the potato — a miracle crop in terms of productivity and nutrition — was combined with an uncaring government, extended periods of bad weather, overpopulation and chronic poverty. 

Phytophthora Infestans is still a problem for potato growers. We have tools to protect our crops now, though, including fungicides and better crop varieties. In 1998, for example, researchers with the United States Department of Agriculture developed a variety highly resistant to late blight, for use by public and private plant breeders. More recently, the American company Simplot used biotechnology (rather than traditional plant breeding) to produce three varieties with high resistance to multiple potato diseases.

What would my ancestors have given for the same?

Crop-breeding can be a climate change solution

The development of better crops is not a new story, of course. Humans have been breeding plants and animals for beneficial traits for millennia. 

But the last century has given us faster and more accurate ways to tinker. Mutagenesis — using radiation to mimic spontaneous mutation in the natural world — has been widely used. Transgenic technology (used to develop what are commonly called genetically modified organisms, or GMOs) can put beneficial genetics from one organism directly into the genome of another. Gene editing, the most recent scientific development, allows for highly precise changes within an organism’s existing genetic code.

The technological achievement underpinning it all is our ability to map an organism’s genetic code — to determine what genes are responsible for what traits. Knowing what gene is responsible for a tomato’s immunity to a specific insect pest, and breeding for it, could reduce insecticide use. Genetically improving gut health in cattle, sheep and goats could help reduce methane emissions. 

Not all of this knowledge is new, and incorporating the long-ignored traits found in Indigenous crop varieties could make modern varieties more resilient. I’ve come across several examples in recent years. Take Andean potatoes, which are far better at handling drought than today’s common commercial varieties. 

Drought is already a problem across much of Canada, and climate change could make it even more frequent and severe. This will strain water sources used for irrigating potatoes and other crops that need lots of water to grow. 

Many potato varieties native to the Andes, though, are hardier in dry conditions than many modern spuds. Researchers with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada have been analyzing the genomes of these Andean potato varieties to identify where their drought tolerance comes from, thus giving potato breeders more options. 

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That’s just one example from a huge list of global public-sector initiatives supporting food system resilience in the face of climate change and other challenges. But for many crops, private sector research far surpasses knowledge production in the public sector. This has been used as a convenient excuse by governments in this country to reduce investment in public sector breeding programs.

Canada has also cut back on extension services — the research and outreach farmers rely on for independent advice, problem-solving expertise and new ideas. While I support innovation from the private sector, and appreciate how companies engage and support farmers like myself and my family, a healthy, resilient agricultural system must include a long-term vision at the federal level, and be supported by a rigorous network of impartial experts. 

Not only are there fewer public dollars flowing to crop development programs, but political blinders also make it more difficult for researchers to access what’s left. Successfully acquiring federal funding for agricultural projects, for example, now relies on the applicant proving their work will address very specific climate change and environmental goals, such as reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Crop breeding on its own is not seen as a means of achieving those goals, even though it certainly could contribute. Consider Sierra Mixe maize, a native corn from Mexico’s Oaxaca state that is related to the crops grown on my farm. 

While modern corn varieties are highly productive, they require a lot of expensive nitrogen fertilizer that can pollute waterways or enter the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas, if handled improperly or if the weather doesn’t cooperate when we need to apply it. 

Sierra Mixe, on the other hand, is able to trap and make use of atmospheric nitrogen by exuding a mucus from above-ground roots. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, and elsewhere, have been trying to incorporate the trait into modern commercial corn varieties. Doing so could help reduce our dependence on nitrogen fertilizer, lower fertilizer costs on the farm and potentially lower nitrogen-based greenhouse gas emissions. 

Even if a crop breeding project doesn’t directly set out to reduce emissions, that doesn’t mean it won’t have some positive effect. Legumes like beans and lentils, for example, naturally produce their own nitrogen by drawing it from the atmosphere and storing it in their roots. Developing more disease or drought -resistant beans and lentils would  allow farmers to grow more of these crops and reduce the amount of nitrogen used and released into the environment.

Crop breeding is a climate solution — and needs to be recognized as such.

Misinformation around biotechnology gets in the way of funding and advancement

There is still opposition to the use of gene editing and other biotechnologies in agriculture. Some of that opposition is rooted in perceived risks to the environment or traditionally bred crop varieties. Concern about corporate ownership is also a factor, but wariness of private enterprise patenting new crops, for example, doesn’t mean there is no role for gene editing in the public or academic sphere. 

And just like in the general public, perspectives within the farming community can differ.

However, much of the past and current discourse around biotechnology has been mired by politically motivated groups spreading misinformation. Public engagement and outreach efforts from scientists, farmers and others who support biotechnology have not always been effective in countering that misinformation. But as the climate crisis grows, Canada should not completely eschew investments in technological advances in plant and animal science — particularly when misinformation still abounds. 

I believe we would do well to embrace modern genomic technology for the revolution it is.

Traditional plant breeding has served humanity well, and will continue to do so. But new approaches (gene editing, in particular) significantly reduce the amount of time and treasure it takes to develop new organisms. 

I am not naive enough to think biotechnology will solve all our problems, just as it alone would surely not have prevented the Great Hunger. But dedication to crop and animal breeding, in whatever form you support, can certainly help us manage risks — if we get serious about making public investments, ensure those investment dollars are actually accessible and recognize the incredible potential afforded us by modern agricultural science.

I doubt my four-times great grandparents, who crossed an ocean amidst death and devastation at home, took food security for granted. We will serve future generations well if we, similarly, do not.