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Agriculture and Weather (Potatoes) | 
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Crops can be very susceptible to disease which, in extreme weather, can lead to major world food shortages.
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Once a disease manifests itself within the crop, it is able to develop with help from the weather. The weather can affect the rapidity of development and how far the disease can spread within the crop fields. ...lesions cause infections that can destroy the plant in a matter of days.
The potato crop suffers from two main diseases - 'Late Blight' and 'Early Blight'. The symptoms of late blight are small, light coloured lesions. It is the weather that helps to transform these early symptoms into a developed stage of the disease. This particular disease uses cool and moist weather to help it expand rapidly into large, dark lesions. These lesions cause infections that can destroy the plant in a matter of days.
Rain, dew and high levels of humidity provide favourable conditions for the development of the infection. The disease is also helped along by wind, as the spores of the disease are carried in the wind to nearby fields and other crops. This spreads the disease yet further, and in its extremity it can cause massive crop failure. Early blight is a fungal infection that is more commonly seen than late blight. The disease manifests itself on the mature leaves of the crop and works its mayhem from there. The disease can work over more varied climatic conditions than the late blight, but favours warm temperatures and heavy bouts of rain and dews. Early blight works most speedily when weather falls into a pattern of alternating wet and dry conditions. Like the late blight disease, the infection is spread by the carrying of spores in the wind and rain. The spreading of the disease can, too, result in crop failure. ...crop failures can adversely affect the country's place in the world's trade market...leaving the country penniless.
Crop failure often spells disaster. It can result in famine that can create great social problems within in a country. It can also lead to economic problems. If a country relies on the export of its potatoes as its main source of wealth, then crop failures can adversely affect the country's place in the world's trade market and may leave the country penniless.
This is reminiscent of what happened in Ireland with the great Irish potato famine of the 1840s. The famine was due to social and economic problems, but it was the blight within their thriving potato crops that heightened the situation. Potatoes were the most abundant and indispensable foodstuffs in Ireland, and the majority of the population were dependant on potatoes in their diet. ...one of the worst famines in European history in which an estimated one million people died of starvation.
It was in the Summer of 1846 that blight completely destroyed the potato crop, and caused one of the worst famines in European history in which an estimated one million people died of starvation. The infection that took hold of the crop was the late blight disease. The favourable weather conditions that the disease required were the typical conditions of an Irish Summer - moderate temperatures and high humidity. The blight completely devastated all the crops and left the country in both social and economic ruin.
Weather has always played a big part in world agriculture, and as weather is impossible to control, these diseases are extremely difficult to put an end to once they take hold. The management of the disease has to be undertaken from the outset by controlling the actual seed, fertilisation techniques and monitoring growth. But if the disease emerges, then the weather becomes the crop's enemy and this is a war of nature that is very hard to fight. | |||||
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