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Causes and effects of the dust bowl
History relationship between humans and the environment
Effects of the dust bowl
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The environment has always influenced mankind throughout the course of our history. The Ice Age engendered a mass extinction of the human population, forcing the early Homo Sapiens to migrate into suitable regions and drastically changing the livelihood of mankind in 70,000 BC (NPR). Likewise, the Dust Bowl, a period of severe dust storms that damaged the prairie lands of the Great Plain between 1934 and 1937, greatly influenced the livelihood of the American citizens in the 1930s. It mainly affected the states of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico where 2.5 million people had moved out of these regions by 1940 (PBS), desperately searching for jobs which were already scarce during the period of the Great Depression. Regardless,
Farmers dug too deep into the ground, destroying the roots and grass that kept the top soil stable. The increased levels of agriculture, planting, overgrazing and harsh winters which only exposed the top soil more. As the top soil became exposed, the strong winds blew away nearly all the top soil of the Great Plains, formulating a massive dust cloud (explaining how the “Dust Bowl” got its name). By 1934, 100 million acres of farm land lost its top soil and the Liberal News in Liberal, Kansas reported, "Some people thought the end of the world was at hand when every ray of daylight was obliterated at 4 p.m. (on Sunday, April 14, 1935),” on April 15, 1935 (Library of
Both individuals documented the California Farm Security Admission or FSA camps during the summer vocation between 1940 and 1941; this documentation came to be known as the “Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection”, a field collection that documented daily lives of the residents of the FSA camps with “18 hours of audio recording, 28 graphic images, and 1.5 linear feet of print materials” (Library of Congress). The documentation included interviews with the migrant workers in California that exposed the grim reality that awaited these hopeful
He will maintain that the criterion of right interpretation is its own suitability to some present purpose (Carr, 1961, p. 31). A number of prejudices, assumptions, and beliefs contributed to not seeing the bigger picture. The wisdom of the time suggested that the Dust Bowl affected all of Oklahoma. Removing that assumption and looking at the facts, it shows that the affected area was the panhandle of Oklahoma.
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
The dust bowl was the worst environmental disaster in the U.S history. Farming practices changed as a result of the Dust bowl. Farmers changed how they plow / take care of their field.There are also many conservation programs and measures implemented as a result and many farmers have fixed drought problems so their soil does not get to dry.
Natural conditions contributed to the cause of the Dust Bowl. During the year of 1936, North America was dealt an extreme am...
The Midwest had been experiencing a severe drought when the wind started to collect any loose dry dirt, building up gigantic dust clouds. The 1920s 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. Professor R. Douglas Hurt is the Director of the Graduate Program in Agricultural History and Rural Studies at Iowa State University in Ames. Professor Hurt wrote the book, The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History, based on historical events and his opinion of the what caused the Dust Bowl.3 Professor Hurt said, "Dust storms in the Southern Great Plains, and indeed, in the Plains as a whole, were not unique to the 1930's..
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
As America tumbled skyward into the 1930s, the country also stumbled earthward into a cataclysmic depression. Farmers all across the country mewled out in agony as huge swarms of flinging dust particles flew amok and disfigured cropland. The dust squirmed itself into houses, barns, and the lungs of innocent people, infecting them with what came to be known as a dust pneumonia. Farmers suffered harshly from the annihilation of their farms due to the soil flying about. It impaired animals, crops, houses, and their families’ health. Horrifically timed, this explosion of catastrophic grime helped the Great Depression terminate America economically; proving the storm to be the wickedest environmental crisis to strike North America. This was the squall that gave the American 1930s the nickname the “Dirty Thirties”, the dust bowl had emerged was not to evaporate until about ten years later. The dust bowl is simplest described as an agricultural nightmare, wreaking havoc from 1930 to 1941on plantations of Midwest America. Ironically, the very people who suffered from the gale caused this calamity onto themselves. The cause of the bowl is blamed to be large scale famers overproducing too many crops, stripping the topsoil of farmland. Not all the weight of the blame rested on overproduction of course, but also a combination of drought, torrid temperatures, and trivial, yet vitally significant prairie fires also played roles in causing the bowl. These events caused the soil to become frail, loose, and subject to passing winds above the land, creating one colossal horde of dust. Clearly, the cause of the dust bowl was overproduction and various factors, resulting in demolished farmland all across North America, proved the dust bo...
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.
The Dust Bowl, like I said before, was a ten year dust storm that had brought tragedy to the states of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, and New Mexico(Dust Bowl). Over weeks of time the sky could be dark for days and most homes that were stable still had thick layers of dirt on them. Topsoil was carried by the ton, from barren fields across hundreds of miles from the Southern and
The Dust Bowl emerged as one of the hardest hit areas during the Great Depression. Years of drought and overuse of soil left the ground of the Great Plains dry and barren. This caused years of unproductive har...
Overall, many humans and animals were impacted severely, even killed from the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s. This included several cattle, sheep, horses, chickens, and many other farm animals. The crops and farms all suffered a great loss and the homes and the people that lived inside of them also suffered a great upheaval of their familiar lives. This ruined many people’s jobs and ways to make a living. All together, this was a very traumatic experience for all of the people involved.
Imagine, sitting in your house when a cloud of suffocating dust fumes in to your home. You have nothing left to do but sit there and breath in the toxicated air, you're in the middle of a dust storm, that's exactly what happened in 1930. In the 1930s giant storms of dust would cover the plains. The series of dust storms was known as the Dust Bowl. We have both mankind and nature to thank for the heavy clouds of dust. Since new farming technology had taken over the traditional way of farming, farmers began to remove the native plants that secured the dirt to the ground allowing the dirt to create giant storms.The dust bowl affected farmers in the United States by losing their land and stock, to migrate to California, and it effected their income.
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 great plains of the united states were covered with dust. The ‘Dust Bowl’ refers to the area in the United States who suffered massive drought along with dust storms. High winds with dust damaged infrastructures, crops, and livestock in this region. The drought intensified the dropping of the economy. The disaster affected the food production. Many people are starving because they don’t have money to buy food and there was no food available. Families who are affected by the dust storm migrated to other areas desperate to find jobs and better living