Saturday, August 22, 2009

The Great Potato Famine of '10?

Earlier this month, Jason Haas noted that the state was experiencing a devastating infection of a fungus attacking tomato plants. In the comments section, I pointed out that this same fungus was jumping to potatoes.

Yesterday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel finally caught up to the story and pointed out that this fungus, which was also responsible for the great potato famine in Ireland has now jumped to potato plants in at least two counties.

Hopefully, the farmers and the government, if needed, are ready to deal with this infestation and minimize the damage to such an important product to Wisconsin.

4 comments:

  1. Good friend of mine was a potato farmer. This thing, if left unchecked could be bad news.

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  2. Thank goodness for modern agribusiness and transportation, so that if the Wisconsin crop is devastated, people will be able to easily continue to buy such an important food stuff from other places.

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  3. Nick, I am sure that is little comfort to the farmers, whose financial well-being is dependent on the potatoes grown here. Not to mention that Wisconsin is something like the third leading potato grower in the country.

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  4. Ah, go ahead, import all ya want. We'll grow more.

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