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Potatoes: History



Along with tomatoes and squash, potatoes are native to South America.

The potato was slow to be adopted by early settlers to North America, particularly by the Puritans, partly because they were profoundly suspicious of any vegetable not mentioned in the Bible.

Potatoes helped save Ireland from famine in 1740 and Prussia in 1774. But Late Blight decimated the fresh potato crop in the 1840s and resulted in massive starvation and immigration to North America.

The potato enabled cheap labour during the European industrial revolution as people could eat self sufficiently on a relatively small piece of land.