The importance of the potato in the 18th century...

How do places urbanize? Usually people migrate to cities because of the multiplicity of choice… You have quick and easy access to public transportation, numerous urban amenities and tonnes of housing options to choose from. When places urbanize, the population concomitantly increases… naturally. For hundreds of years we have been studying population growth examining factors that depopulate and populate areas. This has always been a curious humanitarian question and it is only gaining more research interest as our population surpasses the 6.8 billion mark.

Over the course of civilization, diseases like Black Death, malaria and other deadly epidemics have obliterated populations. However, we have also seen tremendous population growth since the 1950s particularly in India, China, Brazil, the United States and Europe. What exactly has been the cause of such population growth? Is it natural resources, is it the aforementioned urban amenities or is it something else?

The contemporary population question is being studied widely across the world. Interestingly, if we look at the world in the 18th and 19th century, the discovery of the potato not only led to a 22% rise in population, but a 47% rise in urbanization. Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian have done research on the importance of nutrition to economic development. Their findings on the potato are fascinating.

The discovery of the potato was interconnected through geography, the environment, economics and health. After all, potatoes are an inexpensive crop to cultivate and subsequently eat, highly nutritious and are geographically suitable to be cultivated in many parts of the world including Northern Europe, Asia and even Northern Africa.

The discovery of potatoes led to population growth and urbanization in the 18th and 19th century. In the 21st century there are numerous factors contributing to population growth and decline. It seems however, that the discovery of natural resources are far more important today than any one nutritional crop like potatoes.

This is because natural resources have much more economic value and wealth today because of scarcity issues - oil, water and timber just to name a few examples. But natural resource discovery has at times --both historically and contemporarily-- led to conflict and war… factors that lead to depopulation. I wonder if there will be a study that shows the correlation between natural resource discovery and depopulation. Anyway, see Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian's study on the discovery of the potato and urbanization.