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Agriculturalists soon
found potatoes easier to grow and cultivate than other staple
crops, such as wheat and oats; potatoes produce more food energy
than any other European crop for the same area of land and require
only a shovel for harvesting. For all these reasons potatoes became,
by 1650, the staple food of Ireland, and they began to replace
wheat as the major crop elsewhere in Europe, being used to feed
both people and animals. The first mention of potatoes appearing
in North America comes from Irish settlers in Londonderry, New
Hampshire during 1719. By the end of the 18th Century the potato
had become popular in France, due to the advocacy of Antoine Augustine
Parmentier, an employee of King Louis XV.
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The potato became
such an important food for the Irish that the popular imagination
automatically associates it with them today, but its early history
in Ireland remains obscure. One speculation has it that the potato
may have originally arrived in Ireland washed ashore from wrecked
galleons of the Spanish Armada (1588). Another story credits the
introduction of the potato in Ireland to Sir Walter Raleigh, who
did finance transatlantic expeditions, at least one of which made
landfall at Smerwick, County Kerry in October, 1587, but no record
survives of what botanical specimens it may have carried or whether
they thrived in Ireland. Some stories say that Sir Walter first
planted the potato on his estate near Cork.
Above Pictures Are from The U.S.D.A.
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