The last point is arguable, especially when you read about the sheer amounts of food that were being exported as hundreds of thousands starved. The dependence on the spud was no natural outcome. Food prices were beyond ordinary Irish people and the need for profit-making trumped the need to feed the population. Of course there were shining exceptions, examples of wonderful humanitarian behaviour. But those abundant food exports (read about the obscene quantities of butter that were being exported at the very height of the famine), the high food prices and the deaths of hundreds of thousands are inextricably linked. Cause and effect writ large.