Yep, the potato was favoured for the ability to grow enough food to feed your family on the shitty scraps of ground your absentee landlords "allowed" you to kee

Yep, the potato was favoured for the ability to grow enough food to feed your family on the shitty scraps of ground your absentee landlords "allowed" you to keep. In a similar vein, the potato revolutionised Māori inter-tribal warfare when introduced to Aotearoa New Zealand (possibly more so than the musket), as you could grow far more calories from the same soil with potatoes than the traditional kūmara/sweet potato - and they kept far better than kūmara while on the move. This allowed for longer campaigning against opposing tribes, which led to widespread mass migrations to escape enemy tribes - hence why the area now occupied by Auckland Tāmaki Makaurau, our largest city, was mostly depopulated when Europeans started settling it. And of course, those mass migrations led to more conflicts.