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Thread: The global dominance of white people is thanks to the potato

  1. #11
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    Still, the potato drove up agricultural productivity and fed armies. Some more history:

    ...It’s probably no coincidence that the man who once said “an army travels on its stomach” was Europe’s first head-of-state tater-booster. So effective was the crop that Frederick the Great of Prussia ordered his government to distribute free seed potatoes and planting instructions throughout his kingdom. That proved smart: Prussian peasants survived French, Austrian, and Russian invasions in unprecedented numbers.

    Those invaders soon caught on, encouraging their own plebeians to grow the crop. To this end, Marie Antoinette once sported a potato-flower headdress at a court ball to extol the tuber’s virtues, as McNeill recounts.

    The crop certainly did make it easier to staff and feed vast armies. For instance, in the late 1770s, potatoes fed both sides fighting the War of Bavarian Succession, which ended when Bohemia ran out of potatoes.

    The Potato War, as it’s sometimes known, doesn’t reflect the potato’s broader promotion of peace, however. The potato’s spread caused a sharp fall in the incidence of conflict, as three economists—the University of Colorado’s Murat Iyigun, Nathan Nunn of Harvard, and Nancy Qian at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management—document in a new working paper (registration required) published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

    That may have been because people mainly fought over land, and land’s prime value came from agriculture. Increased productivity would have effectively driven down land values, lowering incentives to shed blood fighting over it, they argue. If higher productivity pushed up real wages for peasant farmers, as you’d expect, the opportunity cost of rioting would climb—as it would, too, for rulers who taxed labor for revenue.

    Wars still broke out, of course. But the potato’s spread dramatically limited the destructive consequences of conflict...
    There's of course no one factor.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    We have invasive vines with big, heart shaped leaves. They grow green potatoes that drop and spread, to bad they are toxic.

    The right sized ones make great sling bullets.
    There is no God but Resister and Refugee is his messenger’.

    Book of Democrat Things, Chapter 1:1






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    Quote Originally Posted by resister View Post
    We have invasive vines with big, heart shaped leaves. They grow green potatoes that drop and spread, to bad they are toxic.

    The right sized ones make great sling bullets.
    Dioscorea bulbifera, or air potatoes. Looked it up, and had to get my quota of Latin in today.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Quote Originally Posted by Chris View Post
    Dioscorea bulbifera, or air potatoes. Looked it up, and had to get my quota of Latin in today.
    How rude! If they are on your property, you catch hell, eliminating them.
    There is no God but Resister and Refugee is his messenger’.

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    Quote Originally Posted by resister View Post
    We have invasive vines with big, heart shaped leaves. They grow green potatoes that drop and spread, to bad they are toxic.

    The right sized ones make great sling bullets.
    Speaking oh which, nature has a way of compensating, year before last some insect ate the hell out of the leaves and greatly reduced the production of the potatoes, I googled your latin, Chris. It seems they can reproduce by seed via flower but that is uncommon (makes sense, never seen one flower) mostly the air potatoes bring the next generation.

    Allways wondered if repeated boiling and changing water could make them edible. Never wanted to risk illness to see, though.

    This white man sticks to potatoes I know are edible!
    There is no God but Resister and Refugee is his messenger’.

    Book of Democrat Things, Chapter 1:1






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    Quote Originally Posted by resister View Post
    Speaking oh which, nature has a way of compensating, year before last some insect ate the hell out of the leaves and greatly reduced the production of the potatoes, I googled your latin, Chris. It seems they can reproduce by seed via flower but that is uncommon (makes sense, never seen one flower) mostly the air potatoes bring the next generation.

    Allways wondered if repeated boiling and changing water could make them edible. Never wanted to risk illness to see, though.

    This white man sticks to potatoes I know are edible!
    Those aren't edible. There's another air potato, Dioscorea alata, in Louisiana, I belive, that are edible.
    Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire. ― Gustav Mahler

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    Got my latin in tonight! The beetle lilioceris cheni has been released as a control.

    Who says us ignorant Non british types don't know Latin ?
    There is no God but Resister and Refugee is his messenger’.

    Book of Democrat Things, Chapter 1:1






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