I guess this famine targeted Irishmen in a desire to wipe them out ;)
When I was a kid, they called it the potato "blight," but I guess times change...
While the potato crop failed and it was the main staple of the Irish diet at the time, the other crops did not fail and certainly the livestock were not affected. At the time of the "famine", the English continued to export crops and livestock from Ireland to England. At the same time, Parliament debated on what to do about the "Irish problem". Of course Ireland was not independent at the time so this distancing of Ireland was an interesting way of disowning the situation... Maybe it is just semantics, but a million people died as a result. If it happened today it wouldn't be called a famine....