Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Economical devestation of the dust bowl
Economical devestation of the dust bowl
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
The Dust Bowl probably had more of an impact on the farming industry then on any other industry in America. The Dust Bowl hit farmers hard but they had only themselves to blame. The way in which the farmers cultivated and produced their crops destroyed the land and after severe droughts left much of the land useless.
First to understand what impact the Dust Bowl had on the farmers it needs to be determined what the farmers did to cause the Dust Bowl. Farmers in the early 1900’s prior to the Dust Bowl understood many basic agricultural practices like rotating crops and the importance of grasslands in maintaining topsoil. During the 1920’s though many farmers got too greedy and decided to only grow the crops that would make them the most money ignoring the impact this decision would have on the soil. Farmers continually grew the same crops year after year slowly diminishing the nutrients in the soil until there was almost nothing left (Source 1.) As if this decision wasn’t bad enough farmers then proceeded to cultivate grasslands and plant enormous wheat fields. In the past this would have proved pointless as the farmer could not have dreamed to be able to harvest all of that wheat but with the invention and advancement of the tractor farmers could now plow much more land and increase profit (Source 4.) With the removal of large portions of grasslands the topsoil was no longer anchored down and was just waiting to be blown away by heavy winds. These issues were magnified by the fact that the Great Plains receive less than twenty inches of precipitation yearly on average which is lower than most other parts of the country. (Source 8) All of these decisions by the farmers were magnified when in 1931 a seven year drought period ensued...
... middle of paper ...
...ing through the Great Depression. San Diego: Greenhaven, 2004. 130-40. Print.
Gazit, Chana. “Mass Exodus From the Plains.” PBS PBS.org. 15 Nov. 2009. Web 21 Nov. 2013.
Gorman, Carol. "The Farmer: No Stranger to Hard Times." America's Farm Crisis. New York: F. Watts, 1987. 18-26. Print.
Hughes, Patrick. “Dust Bowl Days.” Weatherwise 48.3 (1995): 32. MasterFILE Main Edition, Web. 20 Nov. 2013.
Long, Robert Emmet. The Farm Crisis. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1987 Print.
McHenry, Robert. “Dust Bowl.” Encyclopedia Britannica. 15th ed. 2003 Print.
Nelson, Cary. “The Great Depression: About the Dust Bowl” Modern American Poetry. Dept. 56 English University at Illinois Urbana Champaign. 2008. Web 21 Nov. 2013.
Oswald, Brad. “PBS’s Dust Bowl documentary history lesson, cautionary tale.”
“When Dust Delivered Despair.” Read 59.7 (2009): 4. MasterFILE Main Edition. Web 20 Nov. 2013.
The Dust Bowl was the name given to the Great Plains area in the 1930s. Much of the region was an agricultural area and relied on it for most of their economy. Combined with The Great Depression and the dust storms, farmers in the Great Plains area were severely hurt. These farmers were seeking opportunity elsewhere near the Pacific where they were mistreated by the others already there. The mistreatment is a form of disenfranchisement, by excluding and segregating a group of people from the rest of society. The disenfranchisement of the Oklahoma farmers during the 1930s was caused by a combination of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression which led to the farmers being forced to move west where they were mistreated because there were not enough jobs.
The Dust Bowl occurred for many reasons, most all our fault. “Some of the reasons that the Dust Bowl occurred were over-farming, livestock overgrazing, drought and poor farming practices.” (Dust Bowl facts and summary) Because of this negative experience it now teached us to be careful and now we know what to do to prevent this.“When drought struck from 1934 to 1937, the soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor.”("Dust Bowl Facts and summary") That's really bad for the farmers because then the wind can easily pick up the dirt off the
One of the factors in the dust bowl was the drought. These farmers are now planting drought resistant strains of corn and wheat. “We have really widespread irrigation use, which allows many farmers to buffer the effects of drought more than they would’ve been able to do in the 1930s.” ("Lieberman") Irrigation use is huge now. SO many farmers use it. Farmers when the dust bowl happened would not have been able to buffer the effects of drought. This is a farming practice that has been very important. “Fortunately, the next major drought will not cause a second dust bowl, as we are now better able to prevent soil erosion.” ("Lieberman") We are now better able to prevent soil erosion because of new farming practices implanted since the Dust Bowl.”Poor agricultural practices and years of sustained drought caused the Dust Bowl.” ("About the Dust Bowl" This is now preventable because we have new farming practices since the dust
The Dust Bowl occurred during the Great Depression, which made it even worse! The Dust Bowl forced farmers out of business. Prices for the crops the farmers grew took a major dip. The total assistance is estimated at $1 billion for the Dust Bowl, according to Dust Bowl effects. The 2012 drought also forced farmers to panic. Due to the drought, food prices went up and farm spending was reduced. The farmers were not bringing in the money as they once were, since people didn't want to buy their products. According to 2012 drought costs, the drought cost taxpayers a record $14 billion!
Unfortunately, the circumstances in the Great Plains all came to a head, resulting in a horrific ten years for citizens of the Great Plains. The Dust Bowl caused government and people to look at farming practices and evaluate their output. These policies resulted in overproduction of crops, causing the prices to fall. The conclusion of World War I and countries that stopped importing foods added to the pain the farmers were already feeling.
Ganzel,Bill “farming in the 1930s” Wessels living history farms. 2003. Web. 19 Nov. 2013 http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/farminginthe1930s.html
The “Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s”, was written by Donald Worster, who admits wanted to write the book for selfish reasons, so that he would have a reason o visit the Southern Plains again. In the book he discusses the events of the “dirty thirties” in the Dust Bowl region and how it affected other areas in America. “Dust Bowl” was a term coined by a journalist and used to describe the area that was in the southern planes in the states of Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas, between the years of 1931 and 1939. This area experienced massive dust storms, which left dust covering everything in its wake. These dust storms were so severe at times that it made it so that the visibility in the area was so low to where people
The Dust Bowl grazed across the Midwest of the United States, destroying the ecology and agriculture of the United States and Canadian Prairies"1. The Midwest had been experiencing a severe drought when the wind started to collect any loose dry dirt building up gigantic dust clouds. The 1920 's were so prosperous with many new inventions and lifestyles being adapted. Farmers now had the aid of a tractor to help plow the fields faster and farther.2 Was the newly plowed dirt the cause of the Dust Bowl, historian, Professor R. Douglas Hurt seems to think so.
Farming was the major growing production in the United States in the 1930's. Panhandle farming attached many people because it attracted many people searching for work. The best crop that was prospering around the country was wheat. The world needed it and the United States could supply it easily because of rich mineral soil. In the beginning of the 1930's it was dry but most farmers made a wheat crop. In 1931 everyone started farming wheat. The wheat crop forced the price down from sixty-eight cents/ bushels in July 1930 to twenty-five cents/ bushels July 1931. Many farmers went broke and others abandoned their fields. As the storms approached the farmers were getting ready. Farmers increased their milking cowherds. The cream from the cows was sold to make milk and the skim milk was fed to the chickens and pigs. When normal feed crops failed, thistles were harvested, and when thistles failed, hardy souls dug up soap weed, which was chopped in a feed mill or by hand and fed to the stock. This was a backbreaking, disheartening chore, which would have broken weaker people. But to the credit of the residents of the Dust Bowl, they shouldered their task and carried on. The people of the region made it because they knew how to take the everyday practical things, which had been used for years and adapt them to meet the crisis.
The drought caused a lot of unfavorable conditions for farmers in the southwest. In Worster’s book he says “Few of us want to live in the region now. There is too much wind, dirt, flatness, space, barbed wire, drought, uncertainty, hard work…” (Worster 105). The droughts caused many unfavorable condition throughout the Oklahoma and Texas panhandles and neighboring sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. Thus, roughly one-third of Texas and Oklahoman farmers left their homes and headed to California in search of migrant work. The droughts during the 1930s are a drastically misrepresented factor of the Dust bowl considering “the 1930s droughts were, in the words of a Weather Bureau scientist, the worst in the climatological history of the country.” (Worster 232) Some of the direct effects of the droughts were that many of the farmers’ crops were damaged by deficient rainfall, high temperatures, and high winds, as well as insect infestations and dust storms that accompanied these conditions. What essentially happened was that the soil lacked the stronger root system of grass as an anchor, so the winds easily picked up the loose topsoil and swirled it into dense dust clouds, called “black blizzards.” The constant dry weather caused crops to fail, leaving the plowed fields exposed to wind erosion. The effects of the drought happened so rapidly and progressively over time that
The area of severe wind erosion, soon known as the Dust Bowl, compromised a section of the wheat belt near the intersection of Kansas, Colorado, and Oklahoma and Texas panhandles. ”(Gregory, 11). Along with Gregory, John Steinbeck in his book, The Harvest Gypsies, and Debra Weber in her book, Dark Sweat, White Gold, also write about these events, and in particular the people who were affected by it. The Dust Bowl had ruined any chance of farmers in those regions being able to farm, because of that they were forced to relocate to be able to survive.
The 1920’s were the singularly most influential years of farming in our country. The loss of farms following the war, and new agricultural practices resulted in the dawn of modern agriculture in our country. The shift from small family to big corporation during this time is now the basis for how our society deals with food today. Traditional farming in the 1920’s underwent a series of massive transitions following WWI as the number of farms decreased and the size of farms increased.
The Dust Bowl was "the darkest moment in the twentieth-century life of the southern plains," (pg. 4) as described by Donald Worster in his book "The Dust Bowl." It was a time of drought, famine, and poverty that existed in the 1930's. It's cause, as Worster presents in a very thorough manner, was a chain of events that was perpetuated by the basic capitalistic society's "need" for expansion and consumption. Considered by some as one of the worst ecological catastrophes in the history of man, Worster argues that the Dust Bowl was created not by nature's work, but by an American culture that was working exactly the way it was planned. In essence, the Dust Bowl was the effect of a society, which deliberately set out to take all it could from the earth while giving next to nothing back.
To begin with, the “Dust Bowl” was one of the causes of economic fallout which resulted in the Great Depression. Because the “Dust Bowl” destroyed crops which were used to sell and make profit, the government had to give up a lot of money in order to try and help the people and land affected by the “Dust Bowl”. The “Dust Bowl” refers to a time during the 1930’s where the Great Plains region was drastically devastated by drought. All of the areas (Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico) all had little to no rainfall, light soil, and high winds, which were not a very suitable combination. The drought lasted from 1934 to 1937, most of the soil during the drought lacked the better root system of grass.
The effect from both the Dust Bowl drought and the Great Depression made it hard on farmers in the early 1900’s; it was hard for farmers to produce crops (“The Ultimate AP US History”). Farmers with small businesses were forced to end