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Chris King

Patata
Potatoes are so common most of us do not give them a second thought. The English word comes from Spanish - patata. The Spanish  discovered them in Peru. 
Before the Spanish brought them to Europe around 1570, there were no potatoes there. Potatoes are now the fourth biggest food crop in the world - the first is rice.  
The potato was not an instant hit in Europe. The leaves of the plant are poisonous. This made people suspicious.  It took  time for Europeans to realise  the root of the potato is a nutritious vegetable, high in vitamin C and other nutrients. 
By the late 1700s - more than  200 years after they were discovered - potatoes were being planted all over Europe.
The Great Hunger
The potato turned out to be such a great crop that by the 1840s almost everyone was eating it. In Ireland, people really  liked it. By 1845, a third of the population was dependent on it. And then something terrible happened. A potato disease started to spread around Europe. It was called potato blight. 
When potato blight  hit Ireland in 1845, crops failed. This was a disaster. Suddenly people had nothing to eat and famine broke out. Over the next seven years, a million people  died of hunger. A further million left Ireland. Many  moved to America.
Fun facts
 The French call the potato pomme de terre. This means 'apple of the earth'. Because the potato has played such an important role as a crop, the United Nations declared 2008 the International Year of the Potato. Check out the website  www.potato2008.org/en/index.html
The potato was the first plant to be grown in space. The space shuttle  Columbia took them up  in 1995. 
The mainland produces more  potatoes than anywhere else in the world today. And although you might think it's just a potato, there are actually about 5,000 different kinds.  Most  come from the Andes  mountains area in South America.
now do this
 1 The potato comes from ...
 a. Spain. 
 b. Peru. 
 c. Ireland.
 2 Potatoes are the ... biggest crop in the world.
 a. second 
 b. fourth 
 c. third 
 3 The world's No 1 producer of potatoes is ...
 a. China. 
 b. Ireland. 
 c. Britain. 
Answers:
May 12



Potatoes