The extent of the potato crop in Ireland at the time of the Famine

Abstract

Any attempt at a quantitative analysis of the failure of the potato in Ireland in 1845-6 requires a knowledge of the extent to which the crop was grown in those years. The collection and publication of official returns of crop acreages and yields in Ireland did not begin until 1847. The figures for the extent of the potato crop in that year, after two seasons of blight had reduced the country to starvation, are quite unrepresentative of pre-Famine conditions. The primary purpose of this paper is to present and analyse the results of a survey of the potato crop in Ireland in the years 1844-6, based on returns discovered in the Public Records Office, Dublin.