Speaker 1: Cool Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the History of Potatoes, Part two
Speaker 2: with ren A Rye. I'm your host Margaret Kiljoy, who
Speaker 2: always talks in this voice or it's just the voice
Speaker 2: I have because I have a cold. This is cool
Speaker 2: people who did cool stuff. I'm your host Margaret Kiljoy,
Speaker 2: but I'm not the host today because Ren's the host today. Hi, Ren,
Speaker 2: how are you doing good?
Speaker 1: I really appreciated that, like intense serious Margaret voice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's definitely like a mix up from your usually you know,
Speaker 1: your usual friendly demeanor.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, potatoes are serious business.
Speaker 1: They are serious business.
Speaker 2: Much like serious business. Is Rory our audio engineer who
Speaker 2: Hi Rory Hi Rory, an unwoman who wrote our theme music.
Speaker 2: And Sophie, who is our producer, who is not here today,
Speaker 2: so we can do whatever we want and that I
Speaker 2: mean we can try and do our job without Sophie around.
Speaker 2: But where we last left off? Wait, I got so
Speaker 2: distracted at the end of last episode. I'm talking about
Speaker 2: other stuff. Where did we last leave off? Where's our cliffhanger?
Speaker 1: We actually left off talking about Ireland. So our cliffhanger
Speaker 1: was that there was this Scottish guy McCullough who claimed
Speaker 1: that the Irish had been prevented from rising up because
Speaker 1: they were, you know, so tied to their little plots
Speaker 1: of land and their potatoes. They didn't even know that
Speaker 1: their lives.
Speaker 2: Were hard, right, and we're going to learn he's wrong. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: hell yeah.
Speaker 1: And I should say that there is a lot of
Speaker 1: information about potatoes in Ireland, in fact, an overwhelming amount
Speaker 1: of information.
Speaker 2: What uh huh so much?
Speaker 1: I uh yeah, it was both wonderful and sort of
Speaker 1: deeply I guess I'm just going to repeat the word
Speaker 1: overwhelming here, overwhelming to dig through. So I do want
Speaker 1: to say I don't actually know enough to make a
Speaker 1: sweeping generalization about whether or not these sort of self
Speaker 1: sufficient life ways of Irish presidents negatively impacted their ability
Speaker 1: to organize with one another. I like can't say overall.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing that's wrong. I'm guessing that's some usual like
Speaker 2: Marx shit totally.
Speaker 1: So I don't know enough to make a whole sleeping
Speaker 1: generalization about you know, self sufficiency and how it impacted
Speaker 1: organizing in rural Ireland. But there was a ton of
Speaker 1: resistance to British colonization. The Irish rose up again and
Speaker 1: again over eight hundred plus years, and in fact they
Speaker 1: sometimes even rose up in directly potato related ways.
Speaker 2: Oh hell yeah.
Speaker 1: So most notably among these were food riots. So food
Speaker 1: riots were common in Ireland, as they also were in
Speaker 1: other parts of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Speaker 1: They were typically in response to sudden price surges and
Speaker 1: other concerns about food and security, and they took different
Speaker 1: They took the form of blockades to prevent food from
Speaker 1: being exported, as well as your classic plundering and looting,
Speaker 1: and less common but still notable were price riots, which
Speaker 1: is when protesters would exppropriate a store of food and
Speaker 1: then sell it for what they saw as a fair price.
Speaker 2: That is so interesting you mentioned that last time.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's such a like robinhood, but like it's like
Speaker 2: kind of almost like a liberally robinhood, but not like
Speaker 2: in a bad way, just to like, I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's interesting to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny, isn't it. I would like to learn
Speaker 1: more about, like some of the dynamics behind why people
Speaker 1: were choosing this Instead of choosing just to like give
Speaker 1: away the potatoes.
Speaker 2: They probably saw it as like this is well, this
Speaker 2: is what the world should be is that things should
Speaker 2: be fairly priced as compared to like, whereas I'm like, well,
Speaker 2: everything should be free. That's the fair price for everything,
Speaker 2: you know. Yeah, but you know, I don't know they
Speaker 2: were willing to throw down for it, So I'm not
Speaker 2: going to nitpick, you know, totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it does seem like they were selling it
Speaker 1: at what was affordable for the peasantry. So it did.
Speaker 1: It did people's lives easier. And many of these riots
Speaker 1: targeted grain, oats, and meal, but they also very often
Speaker 1: targeted potatoes, which, as we discussed previously, were becoming an
Speaker 1: increasingly important food stuff at this time. And historian James Kelly,
Speaker 1: who drew on newspaper reports and registers of correspondents to
Speaker 1: write a book about food rights in Ireland during this time,
Speaker 1: offer some examples of potato riots that took place between
Speaker 1: the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It would be
Speaker 1: an entire project in and of itself to go into
Speaker 1: all of these riots. There were so many.
Speaker 2: Okay, good because I might do an episode later sometime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I'm going to keep it pretty basic and
Speaker 1: just mention a few. Okay, So while carts full of
Speaker 1: potatoes were intercepted, and mills and stores of potatoes were plundered.
Speaker 1: In coastal areas, writers often block shipments of potatoes from
Speaker 1: leaving the ports. So here's a snippet from a newspaper
Speaker 1: article about one such incident in the town of Clonakilty
Speaker 1: in May seventeen eighty three. A few days ago. The
Speaker 1: inhabitants of Klonakilty have had intelligence that several sloops then
Speaker 1: in that harbor were freighted with potatoes at a time
Speaker 1: when a most dreadful jarth of that useful necessity prevailed,
Speaker 1: assembled in large bodies, and in the first transports of
Speaker 1: their resentment, tore away the rigging, demolished the mast yards,
Speaker 1: et cetera, and cast their anchors overboard. They afterwards unloaded
Speaker 1: several vessels and obliged such masters as informed them of
Speaker 1: their destination for Quark Market, solemnly to swear that they
Speaker 1: would dispose of their cargo there and nowhere else.
Speaker 2: Oh, so they would be like, oh, we're not going
Speaker 2: to mess up your ship because you're going to Ireland,
Speaker 2: like you're staying in Ireland.
Speaker 1: In this case. Yes, that wasn't actually always the case.
Speaker 2: Oh but that's interesting. That's kind of like you get
Speaker 2: this again, like these like rioters who are like, well,
Speaker 2: it's about an ethic and not just like I went wild,
Speaker 2: you know, yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, And like there's this idea that food riots
Speaker 1: are spontaneous uprisings and they're often caused by crises, but
Speaker 1: also they're often the result of like a lot of
Speaker 1: careful thinking and planning about access to food. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: since city dwellers had to purchase most of the provisions,
Speaker 1: they couldn't grow them. Food riots in Dublin often took
Speaker 1: the form of riotous mobs that plundered and redistributed food.
Speaker 1: There were also demonstrations, including one in seventeen ninety six
Speaker 1: in which protesters gathered at the Dublin Quays near the
Speaker 1: potato boats to voice their anger at the price of potatoes.
Speaker 1: They chanted bread or potatoes, we are starving.
Speaker 2: That goes hard.
Speaker 1: Yeah. In his book, Kelly talks about food scarcity leading
Speaker 1: to an intense localism and othering of people from elsewhere,
Speaker 1: even of other Irish people. So in Skibboreine, a town
Speaker 1: and County Cork, in eighteen twelve, potato cargo from a
Speaker 1: sloop bound for Dublin was expropriated and then sold locally
Speaker 1: at a cheaper rate. Several decades later, residents of Sligo
Speaker 1: Town barred people from a neighboring county from buying potatoes
Speaker 1: at their market, and the eighteen forty two Claire massacre,
Speaker 1: rooted in a similar impulse, left five people, including three
Speaker 1: protesters dead. Interestingly, while food protesters were certainly met with
Speaker 1: violence and arrest, as was the case in Claire, Kelly
Speaker 1: mentions that the authorities were inconsistent in their responses, that
Speaker 1: they were sort of softer on food riots and other
Speaker 1: forms of revolts and protest. Only a fraction of participants
Speaker 1: in food riots were prosecuted, and Kelly argues that this
Speaker 1: is because food was seen as a necessity, so participants
Speaker 1: had a moral right to riot in the eyes of
Speaker 1: the ruling class.
Speaker 2: That that makes some sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember reading a while ago about I don't want
Speaker 2: to say what country it was, because I'm not sure
Speaker 2: if it was true or not. I never looked it up.
Speaker 2: I was reading about a country that it wasn't illegal
Speaker 2: to try to break out of prison. They would catch you,
Speaker 2: they would stop you, and they put you back in prison.
Speaker 2: And if you hurt people in the process, that was
Speaker 2: a separate crime. But the actual physical act of trying
Speaker 2: to leave prison was seen as like a human like
Speaker 2: not right, but like natural instinct that is like, well, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: I locked you in a cage, you tried to get out.
Speaker 2: I could get mad at you about that, you know,
Speaker 2: and I feel like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The idea that like, well, whatever, you were starving, and
Speaker 2: I'm still going to stop you from stealing this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm still not going to go out and distribute
Speaker 1: food to you. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I see why you're mad, and I'm not
Speaker 2: going to change anything, is what they're saying. Yeah, just
Speaker 2: still somehow still more human than like the US system totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, slightly more human for sure. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: every single case, but that was sort of like in general,
Speaker 1: And from about eighteen fifteen until eighteen forty five there
Speaker 1: was an uptick in social protest and rebellion in Ireland
Speaker 1: in general, and it included in some of those years
Speaker 1: a dramatic increase in food riots. They were particularly widespread
Speaker 1: in the counties of North Munster, including Claire and Limerick.
Speaker 1: In an article that looks at these two counties, Andres
Speaker 1: Erickson reports on food related unrest and protests that occurred
Speaker 1: in the eighteen thirties and forties, many of which had
Speaker 1: to do with potatoes. So beginning in the eighteen twenties,
Speaker 1: the price of potatoes rose steeply, which Ericson argues related
Speaker 1: to greater consumption in Ireland rather than because they were
Speaker 1: being exported. I think there's a little bit like a
Speaker 1: lot of these things have like tensions between different historians
Speaker 1: about what some of the causes were right. The population boom,
Speaker 1: coupled with the unjust distribution of land, probably caused a
Speaker 1: rising demand for potatoes that couldn't be met. In the
Speaker 1: late eighteen thirties and early eighteen forties, potato harvest made
Speaker 1: the situation even more acute. In those years, June and
Speaker 1: July were referred to as the hungry weeks because it
Speaker 1: was common for the World War to run out of
Speaker 1: potatoes by that time and depend on purchased spuds and
Speaker 1: other purchased food. In an effort to make sure potato
Speaker 1: prices remained affordable for the poor, groups of men organized
Speaker 1: attacks on wealthy farmers and posted threatening notices demanding ceilings
Speaker 1: on potato prices. And so those actions would typically get
Speaker 1: carried out between March and early June, before or right
Speaker 1: as the hungry weeks began and the cost of potatoes
Speaker 1: started to rise. And this really points to the fact
Speaker 1: what we were talking about before. These weren't taneous uprisings,
Speaker 1: but well planned operations that were based on knowledge of
Speaker 1: the potato harvest and the market. Yeah. And they were often,
Speaker 1: although not always, carried out by secret societies and militant
Speaker 1: rebels who were referred to as the White Boys, the
Speaker 1: Rock Heights, the Terry Alts, or the Men of Lady Claire.
Speaker 1: And I know you talked about the White Boys, which
Speaker 1: have a very weird name and complicated history on your
Speaker 1: show before right the Molly Maguire episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a bunch of different Ireland got stuff done
Speaker 2: through secret societies while England got stuff done through unions.
Speaker 2: Is like kind of a rough It's an unfair dichotomy
Speaker 2: to draw, but like Ireland was all about the like
Speaker 2: you get together in the pub with your friends, you
Speaker 2: decide to go cross dress and fuck some stuff up totally. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I hadn't heard about it specifically as relates to
Speaker 2: the food riots. I only read about it as relates
Speaker 2: to like killing landlords and stuff, but it makes sense
Speaker 2: that the same groups would also go and do food riots.
Speaker 1: Make sure that potato prices weren't getting too high.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like kind of like an Yeah, it's funny
Speaker 2: because it's like sort of an organized crime, you know.
Speaker 2: But it's also I don't know, Yeah, it's interesting, and
Speaker 2: it's not like I'm not even like saying like, and
Speaker 2: that's the correct organizing method, you know, but I don't
Speaker 2: have a this is a different one.
Speaker 1: You know, totally. Yeah, Yeah, and it's really interesting and
Speaker 1: I'd like it. I read about it in this one
Speaker 1: article and that's enough. Like all of these things are
Speaker 1: just things I want to know so much more about.
Speaker 2: But well, and even the like one of the things
Speaker 2: that I can't remember enough, and so I'm like afraid
Speaker 2: I'll be wrong. So if you're listening, don't take this
Speaker 2: as necessarily the truth. But you're saying about how the
Speaker 2: like land distribution was getting worse. I'm under the impression
Speaker 2: that traditionally Irish land would be divided amongst all of
Speaker 2: the kids, and then the Protestant method was like, no,
Speaker 2: you have to only give it to one kid, So
Speaker 2: you start having these like disenfranchised people, and you have
Speaker 2: this like rise in landless people, and that's like where
Speaker 2: some of the uh where a lot of the diaspora
Speaker 2: comes from. But I don't know the timing of that.
Speaker 2: And then part of me is like, wait, what if
Speaker 2: I haven't inverted right, because I know that there's the
Speaker 2: oh lord, I just don't have my notes in front
Speaker 2: of me. There's like the system by which traditionally Irish
Speaker 2: people would like elect their ruler after one ruler died, right,
Speaker 2: and you know, the way that things would get divvied
Speaker 2: up is just like different than the western capitalist system.
Speaker 1: It's not totally.
Speaker 2: Inherently better, but it was certainly worked better in Ireland.
Speaker 2: And when it got disrupted, then you started having all
Speaker 2: these landless people and stuff. That's my Yeah, don't take
Speaker 2: my details on that, but the overall thrust of it
Speaker 2: I feel confident about.
Speaker 1: And I do know by the time that we're talking
Speaker 1: about I don't know the exact reasons, but there were
Speaker 1: a ton of landless labors in Ireland. So there definitely
Speaker 1: was like a vast landlessness that was happening, Like people
Speaker 1: that didn't even have like a tiny little plot of
Speaker 1: land to grow potatoes. Yeah, so I wanted to share
Speaker 1: one instance of this sort of secret society Potato organized
Speaker 1: crime patrol. In eighteen thirty seven, twenty men in County
Speaker 1: Limerick broke into the homes of seven farmers, smashing their
Speaker 1: doors and windows, and ordered those farmers to sell potatoes
Speaker 1: at an affordable price and rent out their land to
Speaker 1: cottiers on the Konaker system. And so that's that system
Speaker 1: where laborers could rent a plot of land for the
Speaker 1: season to grow potatoes, and for some of them that
Speaker 1: was the only way to survive. Two years later, in
Speaker 1: nearby County Claire, a farmer was dragged outside and forced
Speaker 1: to swear an oath that he would have the price
Speaker 1: of his potatoes, and he actually was forced to refund
Speaker 1: money to the people he had already overcharged. And these
Speaker 1: roping bands also sent letters to the homes of targeted
Speaker 1: farmers and posted notices in public places, and one notice
Speaker 1: posted in the town of Fakeal and County Clare read,
Speaker 1: all persons are hereby required to take due notice that
Speaker 1: any person or persons having the assurance to charge over
Speaker 1: three pence for white potatoes three and a half pence
Speaker 1: per cups his coffe will be his doom if he
Speaker 1: goes beyond the rule of the terry alts. As for strangers,
Speaker 1: they are welcome here so long as they won't go
Speaker 1: beyond the rules of the country. If they do, their
Speaker 1: cars will be cut. And then it signed corffin boys
Speaker 1: with the PS. Any person that takes this down will
Speaker 1: be sorry.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah. It just don't make fucking threatening letters like
Speaker 2: they used to. Totally yeah. Also, I love the like
Speaker 2: shout out that being like, look, hey, this isn't a
Speaker 2: this isn't a nationalist thing. If you're not from here,
Speaker 2: it's fine. You just still can't sell potatoes for a lot.
Speaker 1: Respect the rules of the country. Yeah, totally yeah. And
Speaker 1: this all becomes far more acute with the onset of
Speaker 1: the Great Hunger. So the Great Hunger, which is also
Speaker 1: referred to as the Irish Potato Famine, was caused by
Speaker 1: a potato blight that originated in North America and spread
Speaker 1: across Europe starting the summer of eighteen forty five, and
Speaker 1: thousands of people actually died in other countries, including the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: Prussia and Belgium, but no place was quite as effected
Speaker 1: as Ireland. And this is partially because of how hea
Speaker 1: the Irish poor depended on the potato. Between forty and
Speaker 1: sixty percent of the population subsisted almost entirely on the
Speaker 1: potato by the eighteen forties, and the lumper, the primary
Speaker 1: variety of potato grown in Ireland around the time of
Speaker 1: the famine, was chosen to be grown so widely because
Speaker 1: it produced huge crops, but it wasn't very blight resistant.
Speaker 1: The famine was also really bad in Ireland because of
Speaker 1: Britain's response to the situation. By eighteen forty six, the
Speaker 1: Irish were in a desperate situation, but the English ruling
Speaker 1: class stock cries for help is classic Irish exaggeration.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Charles Treveillyon, the Assistant Secretary to the Treasury who oversaw
Speaker 1: the British response to the famine, viewed it as a
Speaker 1: wage to reduce the surplus Irish population. The Irish who
Speaker 1: survived would, he hoped, join the ranks of the proletariat
Speaker 1: instead of eking out subsistence on the conager system and
Speaker 1: lazy beds. They would become wage laborers who primarily ate
Speaker 1: purchase grain and then, even like half hearted English attempts
Speaker 1: to ameliorate the famine, didn't work. The English refused to
Speaker 1: send grain because it might mess with the free market.
Speaker 1: I tried to figure out exactly, like map out exactly
Speaker 1: what they're thinking was around this, and I couldn't. People
Speaker 1: have written about it, and I couldn't quite figure it out.
Speaker 2: I know, I had always read that they were subsisting
Speaker 2: off potatoes because they were more or less economically forced
Speaker 2: to export all of their other crops, and so yeah,
Speaker 2: that was why when the crop that they actually ate
Speaker 2: for themselves at home, when that one failed, and England
Speaker 2: didn't let them like throw up some trade protectionism or whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, totally yeah, and didn't limit exports.
Speaker 1: But it also seemed like the English could have sent
Speaker 1: additional food and decided not to, And that had to
Speaker 1: do with some like thinking around free market capitalism.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And they sent like weird corn that you couldn't
Speaker 2: really eaten. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they sent the hard flint corn that the Irish
Speaker 1: didn't have the rightquipment to mill.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And another English suggestion was to strain rutting potatoes and
Speaker 1: bake them, so the rotten part was baked off, which
Speaker 1: sounds disgusting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these the potatoes. I grew some rotten I grew
Speaker 2: blite potatoes this year, as we're saying, and yeah, they're
Speaker 2: one of the nastiest things in this world I've ever seen,
Speaker 2: like little I don't even like a little whatever I
Speaker 2: might even describe as too gross.
Speaker 1: Well, there were like gross little bugs on them, right,
Speaker 1: were the bugs good? Well?
Speaker 2: And like I pulled, there was bugs in my stupid
Speaker 2: and the bugs were nasty. Anyway, it was all bad
Speaker 2: and I starved to death. That's what happened.
Speaker 1: Wait, no, as you're eating your your takeout.
Speaker 2: Yeah huh, yeah that someone delivered to me. Yeah no, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: And as you were talking about, Ireland was actually producing
Speaker 1: enough grain to feed the entire population, but most of it,
Speaker 1: alongside barley, oats and other crops, were exported to England
Speaker 1: while the Irish people start. So in eighteen forty six
Speaker 1: and eighteen forty seven you have this wave of riots
Speaker 1: that are related to securing food and famine relief, and
Speaker 1: there was also an increase in this tradition of plundering
Speaker 1: of provisions of just taking food that was needed. Of course,
Speaker 1: these food riots weren't centered on the potato because the
Speaker 1: potatoes were rotting in the fields, right, so they were
Speaker 1: focused on meal and grain and later on influencing how
Speaker 1: soup kitchens were run. In April eighteen forty six, in
Speaker 1: the southern part of County Tipperary and adjacent areas of
Speaker 1: County Waterford and Cork Town, dwellers and the rural poor
Speaker 1: rated cart convoys, cargo boats, meal stores, mills and bakeries
Speaker 1: for food. Food riots and next proporations spread across the
Speaker 1: country in eighteen forty six and forty seven, and there
Speaker 1: was a real emphasis on the western half of the island,
Speaker 1: which is where famine hit the hardest. County Cork alone
Speaker 1: saw one hundred and forty one food riots in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty seven, while Galway, Tipperary and Limerick all had over
Speaker 1: one hundred. There were also marches, including one in County
Speaker 1: May in which ten thousand to forty thousand, which is
Speaker 1: a huge range of numbers, but that's what I got.
Speaker 1: Starving peasants walked to the town of Castle Bar to
Speaker 1: protest that there is not a stone of sound potatoes
Speaker 1: among the whole of us.
Speaker 2: What they should have done is that they should have
Speaker 2: marched to these deals services that advertise and asked to
Speaker 2: purchase here's ads and we're back.
Speaker 1: So from March to May eighteen forty seven, protesters fought
Speaker 1: against the closure of the public works and the indignity
Speaker 1: of soup kitchens.
Speaker 2: What is that? What is the public works?
Speaker 1: Like, that's a great question. The public works is like
Speaker 1: people getting hired to maintain roads and stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, it made me think of.
Speaker 1: Like works progress administration stuff during the Great Depression. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: just like you know, digging ditches and building roads, doing
Speaker 1: like work for the state that would get folks who
Speaker 1: are otherwise unemployed paid. Cool, but they did it. Seems
Speaker 1: like sometime in eighteen forty seven most of the public
Speaker 1: works were closed. They were also protesting against the indignity
Speaker 1: of soup kitchens, but then sort of shifted to being like,
Speaker 1: let's make these soup kitchens better, demanding bigger and better
Speaker 1: rations as well as uncooked meals that they could prepare
Speaker 1: in the privacy of their own homes. There was a
Speaker 1: very strong stigma against things like having to beg for
Speaker 1: food or show up and ask for aid, at least
Speaker 1: within the parts of Ireland that were really hard hit
Speaker 1: by the famine, and so people really wanted to be
Speaker 1: able to take food and cook it in their own homes.
Speaker 2: That makes sense, Yeah, I mean, there shouldn't be that stigma,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't surprise me that there is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. And so by the end of eighteen forty seven,
Speaker 1: these protests had largely waned. Ericson attributes this to an
Speaker 1: increased in hunger, disease, and fatigue.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But also after the conic or system lapses, the public
Speaker 1: works close, there's no longer jobs, wages, or even potato
Speaker 1: growing land to fight for. So even the famine evictions
Speaker 1: of eighteen forty eight met with little resistance, which followed
Speaker 1: on the footsteps of other mass evictions that had happened
Speaker 1: over the previous decade. More than one hundred thousand families
Speaker 1: lost their homes because they couldn't pay rent, or because
Speaker 1: their landlords wanted to use the land for grazing and
Speaker 1: other large scale agricultural activities. I know. Yeah, that's how
Speaker 1: at least some of my ancestors ended up turning into
Speaker 1: settlers in this country. So yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: While a lot of genuine solidarity poured in from around
Speaker 1: the world, the results of the famine were devastating. In
Speaker 1: the end, over one million Irish people died from hunger
Speaker 1: and disease, and one point twenty five million emigrated.
Speaker 2: Which is like a together, that's like a quarter of
Speaker 2: their population.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, it's a huge number. And many of these emigrees,
Speaker 1: of course came to the United States, where they became
Speaker 1: the settlers and colonizers, and according to Earle, the Italian
Speaker 1: economist Francesco Nitty believed that a shift from potatoes to
Speaker 1: meet likewise explained why the Irish workers, who in their
Speaker 1: homeland were idle, week and whimsical, were transformed into energetic
Speaker 1: and productive workers on emigration to the United States, which
Speaker 1: leads into my terrible, terrible joke, which is does eating
Speaker 1: meat turn people into cops? Oh?
Speaker 2: Sh I mean, it's one of the sadder things in
Speaker 2: history is watching the political shift from the Irish person
Speaker 2: in Ireland to the second generation Irish diaspora in the
Speaker 2: United States in the nineteenth century, because, I mean a
Speaker 2: ton of the Irish nationalists lived in the United States
Speaker 2: for a while, but like, yeah, overall, pretty quickly, one
Speaker 2: of the most politically annoying groups in history is the
Speaker 2: Irish American So.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally yeah, And I think, I don't know, it
Speaker 1: makes me sad. I feel like I have a personal
Speaker 1: relationship to it, and it makes me sad, and that's
Speaker 1: all I can really say about it at this moment.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So now we're going to leave Ireland and
Speaker 1: we're going to jump ahead in time. We're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the world wars and the years in between them.
Speaker 1: And there were times when potatoes played a role in
Speaker 1: both perseverance and revolts. During World War One, Sweden, which
Speaker 1: was a neutral country, exported goods, including potatoes and other
Speaker 1: food stuff to Germany, and while this made wealthy traders
Speaker 1: and farmers even richer, it led first to food rationing
Speaker 1: for working people, and then to these rations being cut
Speaker 1: and to widespread food shortages. At the end of April
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen, riots and protests spread across Sweden, starting in
Speaker 1: the small towns, where women rallied to demand more rations
Speaker 1: as well as a fair price for potatoes and milk.
Speaker 1: In both rural and urban places, these protests often included
Speaker 1: the plundering of provisions. For example, women would force their
Speaker 1: way into a grocery store and if they found food hoarded,
Speaker 1: they would demand the grocer sell it at the posted prices.
Speaker 1: Conscriptive soldiers joined the protests, which really alarmed the authorities,
Speaker 1: but their officers did disarm them before they hit the street,
Speaker 1: so they weren't quite as that's funny. Their potential for
Speaker 1: rebellion wasn't quite as strong as it could have been.
Speaker 2: But it's like the officers didn't stop them from going.
Speaker 2: They was like, all right, you can go, but you
Speaker 2: gotta leave your rifle at home.
Speaker 1: That seems to be, yeah, what the case was.
Speaker 2: Which makes some sense honestly, like, yeah, there's many situations
Speaker 2: where having a gun around makes everything worse, and riots
Speaker 2: are among those situations.
Speaker 1: Totally. Yeah, I feel like in a lot of cases
Speaker 1: that is absolutely true. And there were these workers committees
Speaker 1: that often included a Narcho, synaclists and socialists that formed
Speaker 1: in about forty Swedish cities and towns. In the city
Speaker 1: of Ostervik, the Workers Committee released a manifesto that called for,
Speaker 1: in addition to an eight Tom day, the release of
Speaker 1: all those arrested during hunger protests, and of course food,
Speaker 1: the distribution of land to grow potatoes. And although it
Speaker 1: was eventually quell due to infighting, repression and a decline
Speaker 1: and leftist organizing, all the things that we see time
Speaker 1: and time again over two hundred and fifty thousand people
Speaker 1: participated in Sweden's Potato Revolution.
Speaker 2: And I think one of the things that it's interesting
Speaker 2: about that is again, like I know we kind of
Speaker 2: mentioned it earlier, but you know this idea that the
Speaker 2: right wing worries about like lawless looting, right, and that
Speaker 2: happens sometimes and people, you know, and there's times when
Speaker 2: crowds like lose their mind and hurt people and all
Speaker 2: of this. But it's like you're bringing up time after
Speaker 2: time where they're like, look, we just want the food
Speaker 2: to be sold at not price gouged prices. You know.
Speaker 2: It's not like, oh, we want everything for free, although
Speaker 2: I mean again I have no problem with everyone getting
Speaker 2: everything for free, but like, it's not about entitlement. It's
Speaker 2: just literally about hey, you can't just keep jacking up
Speaker 2: the prices while we're all starving.
Speaker 1: Totally, it's about survival.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That same year, in early July, there were also
Speaker 1: potato rides in Amsterdam, and I had trouble finding too
Speaker 1: much information about them in English, but this is what
Speaker 1: he did find. When hungry women and children tried to
Speaker 1: ride a potato ship, they were assured a new shipment
Speaker 1: of potatoes for sale was coming in soon, but the
Speaker 1: potatoes in that shipment were priced too high, and on
Speaker 1: July second, crowd started plundering shops and warehouses. On July four,
Speaker 1: three hundred women armed with bayonets, revolvers, and stones tried
Speaker 1: to expropriate a stored potatoes that were being guarded by troops,
Speaker 1: and on July five, a clash with the army resulted
Speaker 1: in nine people kills and one hundred and fourteen injured.
Speaker 2: I feel like since we currently live in a country
Speaker 2: where the price of basic goods not only went up
Speaker 2: a lot in the past few years, but ye, if
Speaker 2: Trump gets its way his way, then they are going
Speaker 2: to go up way more real soon, totally with tariffs,
Speaker 2: you know, I feel like this is relatable content.
Speaker 1: Oh for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, keep the food prices reasonable or otherwise people will
Speaker 2: find bayonets.
Speaker 1: Yes, although it might be hard to like literally find
Speaker 1: a bayonet in this day and age, but you know equivalence.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, you know there's bayonets up through the
Speaker 2: world Wars and yeah, totally, my dad has a bayonet,
Speaker 2: you know, So if.
Speaker 1: Anyone needs to expropriate potatoes, Margaret's dad has a bayonet. Yeah, yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: During World War Two, potatoes help people across Europe survive.
Speaker 1: They were the single most important food in aiding survival
Speaker 1: during the Siege of Leningrad, which lasted for almost two
Speaker 1: and a half years and killed over eight hundred thousand
Speaker 1: Soviet civilians.
Speaker 2: Thank god.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really really really sad in a move that I mean,
Speaker 1: so much of this is all just actually so sad.
Speaker 1: In a move that harkens back to James Scott, at
Speaker 1: least one poor family outside Rome replanted their entire garden
Speaker 1: with potatoes is a way to prevent the German military
Speaker 1: from taking their crops. Back to that underground food thing.
Speaker 1: And also Jewish children living in the Warsaw Ghetto would
Speaker 1: sneak past the guards on a daily basis, an incredibly
Speaker 1: brave and dangerous endeavor to find food outside of the
Speaker 1: ghetto's walls. In addition to begging, this included digging up
Speaker 1: potatoes that grew on the outskirts of the city.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So earlier we talked about state evating potatoes in early
Speaker 1: modern Europe, and interestingly, potatoes played a similar role in
Speaker 1: China many centuries later. Potatoes likely arrived in China in
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century and were first grown by peasants eking
Speaker 1: out a living on marginal mountainous land in the north
Speaker 1: of the country, like in so many other places, a
Speaker 1: way to survive, you know, kind of on the fringes.
Speaker 1: And that Chang dynasty, which ruled China at the time,
Speaker 1: was interested in preventing famine, but thought the path to
Speaker 1: doing so is through growing rice and other grains, not potatoes.
Speaker 1: Three centuries later, under Mao, potatoes became a method of
Speaker 1: survival and communities where they were grown. During the Great
Speaker 1: Leap Forward of nineteen fifty eight to nineteen sixty two,
Speaker 1: the state appropriated grains, but they didn't appropriate potatoes well.
Speaker 1: The famine that resulted is considered by submetrics to be
Speaker 1: the largest famine of all time. Entire villages survived on potatoes,
Speaker 1: and there was also another state evating element at play
Speaker 1: in MAOIs China, in which there was a certain quota
Speaker 1: of wheat that farmers were required to grow, and instead
Speaker 1: of switching to wheat, farmers would convert the number of
Speaker 1: potatoes they grew into what they believed would be an
Speaker 1: equivalent amount of wheat and report that to the authorities.
Speaker 1: Instead Okay, So there's this interesting history of potato growing
Speaker 1: areas continuing to grow potatoes and just saying they were
Speaker 1: growing wheat.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, no, they're like, no, we were quite happy
Speaker 2: with this thing that it's harder for you to tax
Speaker 2: and this, yeah, takes less work and feeds us better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. So I want to end by talking about
Speaker 1: the South Africa potato boycott of nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 2: Well, before we talk about that, boy, what you shouldn't
Speaker 2: boycott is these goods and services unless they're for bad things,
Speaker 2: in which case you should boycott them. We have no
Speaker 2: legions to advertisers. Ye. Yeah, we just have to do
Speaker 2: it in order to eat potatoes. You're the ads and
Speaker 2: we're back. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, as I mentioned, I want to end by talking
Speaker 1: about the South Africa potato boycott, which happened in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty nine. And I do want to say that in
Speaker 1: an episode about sad, hard things, this felt like one
Speaker 1: of the absolute hardest to research, and I want to
Speaker 1: give listeners a heads up about the intensity of violence involved.
Speaker 1: But it also feels like a really important sort of
Speaker 1: historical episode to talk about it. We're talking about potatoes
Speaker 1: from a people's history perspective. So before I go into
Speaker 1: the boycott itself, it feels important to discuss the historical
Speaker 1: circumstances that gave brise to this. And to do this
Speaker 1: it depended pretty heavily on a book called These Potatoes
Speaker 1: Look Like Humans. The Contested Future of Land, Home and
Speaker 1: Death in South Africa by Umbuso Wacosi, which I definitely
Speaker 1: recommend folks check out to learn more about the political
Speaker 1: and spiritual components of black farm workers struggles from early
Speaker 1: colonial South Africa to the present day. And I've also
Speaker 1: used several other sources, but I want to be sure
Speaker 1: to mention this book by name. Okay, So, the Potato
Speaker 1: boycott was a response to the South African apartheid state,
Speaker 1: in which segregation as well as political and economic discrimination
Speaker 1: were codified into law to uphold the power of the
Speaker 1: country's minority white population. While only given the name apartheid
Speaker 1: after is that if super racist laws were passed in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight. Segregation and white supremacy had long been
Speaker 1: part and parcel of life and the legal system in
Speaker 1: South Africa since it's settlement by Dutch and English colonists
Speaker 1: starting in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the history
Speaker 1: of South Africa apartheid and the whole scope of this
Speaker 1: decade's long anti apartheid movement are more than I can
Speaker 1: talk about in this episode, but I'll sort of be
Speaker 1: touching on these topics here and there while discussing the boycott. So,
Speaker 1: the boycott centered on a town called Bethel, which is
Speaker 1: in a region that was then called the East trans
Speaker 1: Fall and that's now part of Malonga, where large white
Speaker 1: owned potato farms employed a black workforce comprised of locals
Speaker 1: who had been dispossessed by colonialism and white land ownership,
Speaker 1: contract workers from elsewhere in South Africa and neighboring countries,
Speaker 1: and prisoners. Throughout the forties and fifties, these farms gained
Speaker 1: a reputation for brutality, which included owners for men and
Speaker 1: boss boys, which were kind of like local workers who
Speaker 1: were employed in intermediary physician murdering and beating to death
Speaker 1: workers and burying their bodies in the fields.
Speaker 2: Jesus. Yeah.
Speaker 1: While abuse and brutality weren't unique to Bethel, the town's
Speaker 1: potato farms were considered so violent that recruiters looking for
Speaker 1: workers along the border with Rhodesia, a former colonial state
Speaker 1: that bordered South Africa, regularly changed their vehicle registration plates
Speaker 1: so that workers didn't know that they'd be going to
Speaker 1: the East.
Speaker 2: Trons Fall Jesus.
Speaker 1: In the early fifties, three laborers found out that they
Speaker 1: were being taken to Bethel instead of the place they
Speaker 1: thought they were going, and they jumped off the train
Speaker 1: they were on, and at least one of them died
Speaker 1: in the act. Throughout the forties and fifties, exposes were
Speaker 1: published that revealed conditions on Bethel potato farms. In nineteen
Speaker 1: forty seven, Anglican priest and anti apartheid activist Michael Scott
Speaker 1: and journalists Ruth First, working as a photographer, collaborated on
Speaker 1: an expose about the Bethel farms with help from investigative
Speaker 1: journalist Henry Nukmalo. They were horrified to find child laborers
Speaker 1: working in the fields alongside contract workers from Nyassaland, which
Speaker 1: is now Malawi. These workers had signed contracts that promised
Speaker 1: poor pay and few protections, either because they were illiterate
Speaker 1: and were told deceitful information about what the contracts contained,
Speaker 1: or because they were so desperate for work that they
Speaker 1: knew they were terrible deals, but they signed them anyway.
Speaker 2: Happens all over the world now, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And other workers included prisoners who were sent to the
Speaker 1: farms for the duration of their sentences. On some farms,
Speaker 1: these prisoners had their clothes confiscated and were forced to
Speaker 1: wear potato sacks, a measure that the landowners believed would
Speaker 1: prevent them from running away.
Speaker 2: Fuck.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty two, Nukmalo built on first in Scott's
Speaker 1: work by publishing another expose and Drum magazine. Unlike Scott
Speaker 1: and First, who were white, Nucmalo was a Black African,
Speaker 1: which allowed him to go undercover for the assignment. Additionally,
Speaker 1: laborers spoke to Nucmala more freely than they had to
Speaker 1: Scott and articulated their fears of speaking up against the
Speaker 1: farmers into the police. And This expose includes quotes from
Speaker 1: Bethel based organizer and African National Congress member Gert Sabandi,
Speaker 1: who may have also helped First in Scott and their
Speaker 1: reporting and is often considered to have played an organizing
Speaker 1: role in the boycott, although the scope of his contributions
Speaker 1: stopped fully known. Nonetheless, to Bendi's work exposing the case,
Speaker 1: conditions of farms and Bethel and organizing labors there played
Speaker 1: an important role in laying the groundwork for the boycott.
Speaker 1: So while prison labor had long been used on South
Speaker 1: African farms, including in Bethel, in nineteen fifty three the
Speaker 1: petty offender scheme landed on the books. As part of
Speaker 1: this scheme, black South Africans who are found guilty of
Speaker 1: petty apartheid crimes either had to serve a three month
Speaker 1: jail sentence or spend that time working on a farm
Speaker 1: for a pittance, a scheme device to ameliorate both overcrowding
Speaker 1: in jails and labor shortages on farms.
Speaker 2: When you say like apartheid crimes, is this like I
Speaker 2: don't understand enough about a parteid South Africa's It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you were in the wrong part of town where black
Speaker 2: people aren't allowed or something.
Speaker 1: Essentially, yes, yeah, okay. Petty apartheid crimes were any of
Speaker 1: any crime that transgressed the laws that kept South Africans
Speaker 1: of different racial groups apart. But one of those is
Speaker 1: breaking the past laws which required non white South Africans
Speaker 1: to carry documents that authorize them to travel through a
Speaker 1: work in white classified areas, and these his laws actually
Speaker 1: had a particular impact on black South Africans, and when
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifty two Natives Act instituted reference books in
Speaker 1: the place of passes, every black man sixteen years of
Speaker 1: age or older was required to have his on him
Speaker 1: at all times.
Speaker 2: Jesus uh huh, So you.
Speaker 1: Could, yeah, you could end up sent to one of
Speaker 1: these farms because you didn't have the proper documentation on you.
Speaker 1: And although theoretically offenders were given the choice to work
Speaker 1: on farms versus serving their sentences in jails, in reality
Speaker 1: they were often coerced. He j the Bear, the public
Speaker 1: prosecutor who put this scheme into motion, was known to have,
Speaker 1: at least in certain instances, sent to restues straight to
Speaker 1: the farm without them appearing in court first. And he
Speaker 1: also told arrestees that if they didn't accept work on farms,
Speaker 1: they'd be punished by their ancestors, which is a threat
Speaker 1: that Ukosi describes as eschatological terror.
Speaker 2: WHOA, that's yeah, I mean, it's funny because it's like
Speaker 2: this is the way that people are going to talk
Speaker 2: about the United States. It's hopefully soon. You know, the
Speaker 2: prison labor systems that exist within the United States of
Speaker 2: like you're more or less coerced into these jobs that
Speaker 2: pay basically nothing and all of these things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and there was a whole there's a whole sort
Speaker 1: of thread to this story that in this book These
Speaker 1: Potatoes Look like Humans really goes into thinking about like
Speaker 1: the spiritual violence. And I don't get too much into
Speaker 1: that in this section, but if you are interested in that,
Speaker 1: there's like a lot more within the book talking about
Speaker 1: like sort of the yeah, eschatological terror that was wielded
Speaker 1: against people. So the potato boycott itself was catalyzed by
Speaker 1: a few different factors. So by nineteen fifty nine, almost
Speaker 1: all other forms of political action had been outlawed by
Speaker 1: the government, so boycotts were among the only options that
Speaker 1: anti apartheid activists had, huh.
Speaker 2: And so that probably ties into the broader like because
Speaker 2: one of the main things that thought apartheid global he
Speaker 2: was you know, sanctions or boycott's yes, boycott, devestment, sanction.
Speaker 2: That's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it really was spurred by this this moment
Speaker 1: where like everything else had basically been outlining criminalized. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yeah, the exposs that had covered Bethel had put
Speaker 1: a spotlight on the plight of farm laborers there when
Speaker 1: Cosey argues that the death of Cornelius Mogoko, a twenty
Speaker 1: four year old farm laborer who died on the Lake
Speaker 1: Dar farm on March five, nineteen fifty nine, also played
Speaker 1: a particularly decisive role. He was seen as a slow worker,
Speaker 1: which was unacceptable on the potato farms, and because of this,
Speaker 1: Mokogo was beaten dehydrated and he was made to keep
Speaker 1: working in the full sun until he collapsed and died.
Speaker 1: The boycott was initially called for by activists Robert Reisha
Speaker 1: at the African National Congress's annual Anti pass conference, which
Speaker 1: took place at the end of May nineteen fifty nine.
Speaker 1: And the ANC is actually now the governing party of Africa, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but at the time it was an opposition party that
Speaker 1: was extremely instrumental in the fight against apartheid. So the
Speaker 1: call goes out at the end of May and the
Speaker 1: boycott begins on June twenty six, and according to historian
Speaker 1: Cornelis Muller, it took some time to gain steam. Things
Speaker 1: picked up after several protest marches in which activists made
Speaker 1: their way to Johannesburg markets dressed in potato sacks and
Speaker 1: potato necklaces bearing banners with slogans like potatoes are produced
Speaker 1: as slave labor and donate potatoes don't buy chips, meaning
Speaker 1: of course chips in the British English.
Speaker 2: Sense of funch fries.
Speaker 1: I guess they're both actually made of potatoes. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't actually matter, but it totally yeah. And it
Speaker 1: was also effective because there was this belief that potatoes
Speaker 1: were taking on the shape of the humans that had
Speaker 1: been buried in the fields.
Speaker 2: Oh shit, so this is where the book gets its name.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, And for some this was a metaphor, while
Speaker 1: for others it was, according to Whenkosi, seen as the
Speaker 1: spiritual return of a dead worker, embodying that which was
Speaker 1: buried in the land. And according to trade unionist and
Speaker 1: ANTSI organizer Francis Bard, we used to contemn a potato
Speaker 1: when we see one that had a hole or of
Speaker 1: black mark. We used to tell the people in the
Speaker 1: public meetings, you see this mark here, it's where your
Speaker 1: child's blood went in. You see this mark here, it's
Speaker 1: the blood of our children. That's why the potato is
Speaker 1: So the people started hating potatoes like anything, and even
Speaker 1: the whites when they heard that we are boycotting the
Speaker 1: potatoes and that we say that these potatoes are full
Speaker 1: of the blood of the African people, then they also
Speaker 1: began boycotting them. That boycott was very affective, you know,
Speaker 1: the farmers couldn't sell their potatoes anywhere, and that the
Speaker 1: market the workers wouldn't even carry the potatoes.
Speaker 2: Were the white people boycotting because they were like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is a simple thing we can do against apartheid,
Speaker 2: or are they like I just don't want to eat
Speaker 2: African blood in my food.
Speaker 1: I think it was the latter, is how I'm reading this.
Speaker 2: There, No, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there certainly were white anti apartheid activists, but I
Speaker 1: don't think they were the majority by an So yeah totally.
Speaker 1: And bard Ward about the economic success of the boycotts
Speaker 1: and the fact that it was called off in August
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine because the farmers gave up this business
Speaker 1: of making the boys work on the farms, The economic
Speaker 1: impacts of the boycott are debated. It seems like different
Speaker 1: newspapers with different political viewpoints are reporting different things. Though
Speaker 1: I strongly sort of air on believing the anti apartheid
Speaker 1: and farm labor.
Speaker 2: Activists who said it worked, who.
Speaker 1: Said that it worked. Yeah, you just see this kind
Speaker 1: of like sort of semantic war in the press about
Speaker 1: you know, how effective the boycott is. And even before
Speaker 1: the boycott began, farmers had started sending farm workers back
Speaker 1: to the labor bureaus driven by the negative media attention,
Speaker 1: and the South African government decided to end the petty
Speaker 1: offender scheme on June sixteenth, nineteen fifty nine, shortly before
Speaker 1: the boycott began, in the wake of mounting pressure and
Speaker 1: ongoing media attention, and a memo was issued that August
Speaker 1: requiring farmers to real workers covered by the scheme.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And one thing I found interesting was that the
Speaker 1: boycott also had an impact on the stabilization scheme of
Speaker 1: the South Africa Potato Board. In this scheme, the board
Speaker 1: would get rid of third rate potatoes by selling them
Speaker 1: for cheaper and black communities. And because of the boycott,
Speaker 1: these potatoes were piling up in markets, and one article
Speaker 1: published in the wake of the boycott mentioned that the
Speaker 1: Potato Board had started encouraging farmers to buy these potatoes
Speaker 1: as feed. The research I found felt a little bit unclear,
Speaker 1: but it was suggested that the Potato Board also stopped
Speaker 1: selling these scratching potatoes on the market for human consumption
Speaker 1: in general, So that might have been another impact of
Speaker 1: the boycott, But for sure, the biggest impact of the
Speaker 1: boycott was the role that it played in catalyzing international
Speaker 1: support for the anti apartheid movement. So a British boycott
Speaker 1: of South African goods kicked off in the same day
Speaker 1: June twenty sixth, nineteen fifty nine. It became a large
Speaker 1: scale mobilizing force for the next eight months, and it
Speaker 1: laid the groundwork for future British anti apartheid actions, and
Speaker 1: you see international solidarity, boycotts and sanctions that would grow
Speaker 1: over the coming years to become a major part of
Speaker 1: the anti apartheid movement. Apartheid only ended in a formal
Speaker 1: political sense in the nineteen nineties, although of course the political, social,
Speaker 1: and other effects of racism and white supremacy linger on
Speaker 1: in South Africa. As of twenty nineteen, whites, who make
Speaker 1: up less than ten percent of the country's population, still
Speaker 1: own seventy two percent of individually owned land in South Africa.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was expecting you to say, like fifty percent.
Speaker 1: I don't know you know, yeah, and the struggle, you know,
Speaker 1: the struggle for liberation continues as well, and there's been
Speaker 1: I think a lot of tensions recently actually between like
Speaker 1: white landowners and like wealthy farmers and labors in the area.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so that's the South Africa potato boycott, and
Speaker 1: that's sort of where we're ending for today. So we've
Speaker 1: talked about potatoes over a span of thousands of years
Speaker 1: and in more than a dozen cultures and resisted spoovements,
Speaker 1: and I'm wondering at the end of all this, what
Speaker 1: you think about the potato.
Speaker 2: I still like the potato, although right now I'm like
Speaker 2: so sick that I'm like, food is I know, I
Speaker 2: just ate some, but that's because I need to in
Speaker 2: order to survive.
Speaker 1: Totally.
Speaker 2: Like right now I'm like, oh, I ate food, and
Speaker 2: I feel terrible, even though it's not the potato's fault.
Speaker 2: It's the cold virus's fault. But it's so fascinating, like
Speaker 2: I was saying at the end of the first episode,
Speaker 2: like the fact that it's like all of these different things,
Speaker 2: you know, the potato is being used for all of
Speaker 2: these different things. And then even like this last one
Speaker 2: with the you know, the potato boycott. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: that's not the potato's fault. And everyone knows that it's
Speaker 2: not the potato's fault. Do you It's okay if you don't,
Speaker 2: But like, do you know how that affected like potato
Speaker 2: consumption and potato culture in South Africa after the boycott?
Speaker 1: I don't. Okay, yeah, unfortunately not.
Speaker 2: But it's just no, it's just interesting to me how
Speaker 2: all over the world this uh is very effective food.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It's just I don't know. That's all I got.
Speaker 2: That's all I got. I guess a lot of stuff
Speaker 2: I'm gonna be thinking about for a while. As potatoes.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm gonna bring it back as a sponsor of
Speaker 2: the show. You know. I think part of the reason
Speaker 2: I kind of dropped that bit talking about this show
Speaker 2: is brought to you by Potatoes is because I was like,
Speaker 2: is it just a tool of colonization? And now I
Speaker 2: know the answers is no, you know, yeah, and it's
Speaker 2: it's a complicated thing and we should embrace all of
Speaker 2: our weird complications, like just like being you know, white
Speaker 2: person in North America is complicated and we need to
Speaker 2: for sure accept that complication rather than like, you know,
Speaker 2: wallowing and guilty not doing anything. You know, we just
Speaker 2: need to like accept that it is complicated and continue
Speaker 2: on with it. And that's how I feel about potatoes.
Speaker 2: It's the same as white people. No, this metaphor didn't
Speaker 2: really work, but I'm going to blame that on how
Speaker 2: sick I am.
Speaker 1: Totally. I also asked your ridiculous question, which was to
Speaker 1: have the singular opinion about a really complicated thing.
Speaker 2: So oh no, no, it's all right. Normally that's like
Speaker 2: my job, right, Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, what do you think about the potato?
Speaker 2: Yeah, potato, Yeah, it's all right, that's how I feel.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's all kind of I want. Yeah, I want
Speaker 1: to live in a world where potatoes are in the
Speaker 1: service of everyday people in resisting states, and you know,
Speaker 1: may that be so as we move forward.
Speaker 2: Totally, I love that they're are the anarchy vegetable that rules.
Speaker 1: Yeah, potatoes canonically anarchist.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, if people want to know more about your
Speaker 2: work or want to follow you on the internet or
Speaker 2: read your book, or what do you got for them?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Right now, I'm mostly only on the internet on Instagram,
Speaker 1: just under my name at ren A Rye and I
Speaker 1: edited an anthology called Nourishing Resistance. I also work on
Speaker 1: a project called Living and Fighting out of Tucson.
Speaker 2: Yeah awesome. And if you want to follow me, I'm
Speaker 2: trying to not be on Twitter anymore, and so you
Speaker 2: can yell at me if you see me there. Maybe
Speaker 2: I don't know. Probably I am on Blue Sky. I
Speaker 2: got on it early enough that my name is just
Speaker 2: Margaret on Blue Sky. I'm very proud of that. I
Speaker 2: don't know why I am because I'm sick and my
Speaker 2: brain doesn't work, that's why. But you can follow me there.
Speaker 2: You can follow me on Instagram at Margaret Kiljoy. You
Speaker 2: can follow me on substack at Marter Kiljoy. And you
Speaker 2: can organize with your friends to build networks of mutual
Speaker 2: aid and solidarity, because that's all what good things are
Speaker 2: built on. Yeah, and you can take care of each
Speaker 2: other during bad times totally.
Speaker 1: And I'll also say throughout this whole working on this episode,
Speaker 1: I've been thinking a lot about the people of Gaza
Speaker 1: who are facing huge like starvation in a huge way
Speaker 1: and lack of food access in a huge way. And
Speaker 1: I've given some money to this project called the Santabel Team,
Speaker 1: which does like food distribution in Gaza, so I kind
Speaker 1: of wanted to shout them out too, or like supporting
Speaker 1: in any way the folks over there, you know, as
Speaker 1: we're talking about famine, and that's not the only place,
Speaker 1: right there are famines happening all over the world. Ye,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I have been thinking a lot about that
Speaker 1: while I've been writing and working through this, and I
Speaker 1: just wanted to mention.
Speaker 2: It isn't there Some fiction book I just read has
Speaker 2: people of different religious faiths making the statement to save
Speaker 2: one person is to save all of humanity, and I
Speaker 2: don't know which religion said it first. That concept, I
Speaker 2: think is a good example of that. It's like, oh,
Speaker 2: you can't save everyone, so you shouldn't save anyone. That
Speaker 2: is the least sensical thing anyone has ever said. Totally,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of us. If everyone saves someone, then
Speaker 2: we've saved twice as many people as there are, you know, Yeah,
Speaker 2: just find a way to help and start helping. What
Speaker 2: is the name of the place that you just said that?
Speaker 1: What the Suna Belt Team. It's s A N A
Speaker 1: B E L. And you can find them on Instagram
Speaker 1: and I think they also have a website awesome.
Speaker 2: So yeah, all right, and yeah and if you want,
Speaker 2: there's going to be show notes in with sources in
Speaker 2: the show notes. That's this is why Ren had to
Speaker 2: be the host today, is that my brain is totally Yeah.
Speaker 1: But you're a great guest.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I thanks. I watch a lot of guests
Speaker 2: on this show. So yeah, and we'll be back when
Speaker 2: my brain works soon. Take care of each other. Bye.
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