It’s a forecast no Irish person with a sense of history expected ever to hear again: a severe potato shortage looms.
A surfeit of rain has delayed indefinitely the planting of next season’s crops, and though the ensuing tuber outage won’t kill anyone, as it did in the famine of the 1840s, it’s amazing how much consternation the lack of a single staple food – however easily sourced from elsewhere – can still cause.
First, there is the sheer absurdity of complaining about the amount of rain in Ireland – akin to objecting to how much pink there is in Barbie or the incidence of cat videos on the internet. This country didn’t get to be called the Emerald Isle without what New Zealanders are accustomed to calling irreducible pluviality.
The island has, however, absorbed up to five times the normal precipitation.
Even within the imposed harmony of the European Union (EU), the issue of potato supply remains curiously prickly. Though widely culturally associated with Ireland, potatoes have been a staple of many countries since at least the 1500s, and there’s a fierce sense of entitlement about purveying them.
There’s a brisk trade not just in potato growing, but in potato dumping, the denial of potato dumping and protracted anti-dumping litigation between some EU countries and the rest of the potato-eating world. Code word “spud” seems to activate the World Trade Organisation’s fee-generating mechanisms quicker than you can specify “crinkle-cut or wedges?”
Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany have faced repeated anti-dumping action from South Africa, and accusations from South America and China.
The EU saw off anti-dumping charges by Colombia, but its export of the world’s fifth most important crop remains – it must be said – a hot potato. Tension centres on processed frozen exports – chips, hash-browns and the like. New Zealand is among countries beady about the impact of these on its own growers.
Under EU rules, Ireland cannot technically be dumped upon by fellow EU countries, nor has it dumped, but coals-to-Newcastle resentment about pricier non-Irish spuds will be acute.
Another complication is farmers’ incomes. Late sowing will doom a much higher proportion of the crop to poor returns and failure, because it’s harder to control disease once the season warms up.
Potato growers aren’t suffering alone. Sodden land brings fodder shortages, misery and health vulnerability for stock – and let’s not dwell on what Ireland’s acute shortage of slurry storage capacity might lead to.
The government is asking banks to show mercy to the sector and gearing up to make – and defend – special payments to affected farmers.
In the usual run of things, there’d be a silver lining to the clouds producing all this rain, but quite the opposite. Ireland is also facing a water shortage, which might in turn exacerbate its housing shortage.
Water utility Uisce Éireann says its treatment stations are struggling to meet demand because the deluge has badly overtaxed its infrastructure. Staff are scurrying to fix the backlog of damage, with temporary suspension of some Dubliners’ water supply, warnings about drinking water safety and nagging about shorter showers.
Now, some housing developments may be stalled because Uisce is so burdened with repairs, it’s running out of capacity for new infrastructure.
Since Irish housing – among the EU’s most expensive – often polls as the country’s biggest problem, it’s a cruelly inauspicious backdrop to Simon Harris becoming the new taoiseach (prime minister) following Leo Varadkar’s resignation.
Ireland remains prosperous, but what shamrock-wilting symbolism to mark Harris’s ascent: the pots at the end of all those shimmering Irish rainbows being blessed not with leprechaun gold but soggy tatties.