What is the passage mainly arguing?

Blight became catastrophic through crop dependence, poverty, land structures, and inadequate policy. (The final paragraph gathers the interacting causes: disease, dependence, poverty, land and trade structures, and state response.)

What does the passage say continued even while people were hungry?

Food continued to leave Ireland through trade. (The second paragraph states that Ireland produced other foods and that food continued to leave through trade.)

Why did the presence of other food not prevent widespread hunger?

Many families lacked the money or control of land needed to obtain it. (The passage connects hunger to poverty, prices, and lack of control over the land, not simply to the amount of food produced.)

In the second paragraph, “relief” means

aid given to people during a crisis (Public works and other aid are examples of relief offered during the crisis.)

The Potato and the Great Irish Famine: Level 4 Reading Comprehension Questions

Potatoes reached Europe from the Andes in the sixteenth century. In Ireland, the crop produced many calories on small plots and became especially important to poor tenant families. By the 1840s, poverty and an unequal landholding system left many people heavily dependent on potatoes while they had little money or land for alternatives.

In 1845, potato blight began ruining harvests, and it returned in later years. Yet blight alone does not explain the scale of the Great Irish Famine. Ireland still produced other foods, and food continued to leave Ireland through trade. Many hungry families could not afford that food or control the land that produced it. Relief policy also mattered. British government programs changed over time, but public works and other aid proved inadequate, while policies shaped by laissez-faire ideas limited responsibility. Evictions made the crisis worse for many tenants.

The catastrophe had several causes: a destructive plant disease, deep dependence on one crop, poverty, land and trade structures, and an insufficient state response. About one million people died, and many more emigrated. Remembering all of those causes does not make the blight unimportant. It explains why the same crop failure became a human disaster of such enormous size.

Comprehension questions