Famine and Free Trade in the Covid Age: Lessons from the Great Irish Famine

Governments over two centuries have repeatedly confronted whether freer trade helps or hinders the problem of widespread food shortages. This issue is of utmost concern in the current pandemic and the accompanying reaction of food markets to COVID-19, in which food insecurity is now a central challenge. This article will consider the historical record of the Great Famine in Ireland and its economic, agronomic, and political lessons for food and trade policy. These lessons include the likelihood of supply chain disruptions and panic buying as well as export restrictions, food purchases from abroad and the complexities of political and military strife. It finds that allowing market forces to cause freer flows of commodities is important if not sufficient to deal with the crises that pandemics cause. Resolute political intervention is also critical: the historical record reinforces the role of political leadership in this process.