Featureless russet oval tubers, easy to grow and great in yield, potatoes are rich in vitamins and minerals, such as potassium, vitamin C, folate and provide high-quality carbohydrates for the human body, which have made potatoes significant roles on the table in our history.

The potato eaters nowadays tend to eat potatoes only as a side dish. Whereas potatoes used to be the only food the peasants could afford.

Vincent van Gogh, “The Potato Eaters”

With such a modest existence, potatoes were the main dish and the only dish on the table for the peasants, and also one of the few foods they could afford. Whereas nowadays potatoes tend to be a side dish, providing more satiety for the diners.

The tracks of privation reflected on the hands and faces of peasants.

Potatoes traveled with the Spanish fleet over the Atlantic Ocean to the European continent, boarded on Spain in the 16th century.

But it was not until the 18th century that potatoes have grown widely in Europe.

In the war-trodden era with a huge privation, mostly were the peasants, cheap potatoes had been highly relied on as trade commodities and staples.

In honor of Jean Francois Millet’s “Potatoes planters”, I resembled potatoes peels to build a canvas, like how Millet paid respects to the planters on his canvas.

Over the centuries, peasants were planting potatoes to eat even they were considered as unfit food, even for animals. During the era, the artists mostly painted for the rich, but Jean Francois Millet, instead, whole-heartedly dedicated his skills and talents to the poverty, especially farmers and their humble potatoes.

Move to Irland in the 17th centuries, Irish were mostly poor peasants and Catholics accounted for 80 percent of population, on the other hand, the rest of 20 percent were Protestantism landlords from England who owned most of the lands, since Irland was merged with England in 1801.

In 1845, a long-existing potato disease, late blight broke out and resulted in a severe potato crop failure, which is recorded the Great Famine in human history. Without adequate potato yields, the peasants was chased off from the landlords and they hardly gain incomes to buy any food. Hence, they had to buy more cheap potatoes to feed themselves.

Consequentially, the higher the cost of potatoes had been rising, the fewer alternatives those peasants could have afforded.

Workers had got hunched carrying potatoes to trade across the Irish Sea. Nowadays, we hunch for the lower shelf in the supermarket.

During the Great Famine, nevertheless, the potato demands from England had only increased regardless of their severe starvation, so Ireland still remained a potato net exporter to Britain. Given this reason, Scholars deduced that the famine considerably boosted the Irish’s resolve to fight for freedom. In 1918, the Independent War broke out and Irish were finally independent from Britain in 1922.

The importance of potatoes has seen no decrease as time goes by. Perhaps with their essentiality, they still remained the most loveable food for human beings, no matter the rich or the poor.