The Negative Effects Of The Dust Bowl

740 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Essay about the dust bowl

The Dust Bowl was a time of serious depression, and it gave a very big impact in the economy.The economy was negatively affected by the Dust Bowl. It was hugely negatively affected that it the part of the South west had to have government assistance, The was a huge decrease in the number of jobs, and there was death to all cattle crops.


One reason is Government help.“In all, assistance may have reached $1 billion (in 1930s dollars) by the end of the drought.”Source 1("Economics of the Dust Bowl") The quote says clearly that in the drought many people needed assistance for surviving the Dust Bowl because of losing their jobs. “The economic cost of the of the drought is difficult to estimate due to its large coverage (60% of U.S.), long …show more content…

“The cumulative effects of the combined environmental and economic crises created widespread hardship, bankrupted many local governments, propelled high rates of farm abandonment and out-migration, and stimulated dramatic changes in government agricultural, land management and socio-economic policies in the US and Canada.” Source 3 (“What we learned from the Dust Bowl: lessons in science, policy, and adaptation”)In this quote it says that the dust Bowl created a lack of profit in the general area of Oklahoma but in soon spread loss of agriculture throughout the US and to Canada. The Dust Bowl also caused over-migration to specifically CA. “Conflict occur frequently when economic conditions are poor, and drought forces migration.” Source 2("Out of the Dust")This quote states clearly that the people in the town sometimes were in such a bad situation they had to migrate, they usually migrated to California where they would seek out …show more content…

“The impacts of the Great Depression were experienced by Great Plains residents most directly in the forms of collapsed commodity prices, that wiped out farm incomes, and high unemployment in other economic sectors such as railroads and energy development that made non-agricultural employment opportunities scarce.”Source 3 (“What we learned from the Dust Bowl: lessons in science, policy, and adaptation”)The quote has said that the Dust Bowl forced many farmers to quit because of the scarce numbers of crop and cattle. “More than 75% of the topsoil was blown away, causing a great decrease in agricultural land values. In areas where the erosion was the highest, less than 25% of agricultural losses could be recovered, and the population greatly decreased and remained low for decades after the Dust Bowl. Source 4("Dust Bowl Facts")The quote states that the Dust Bowl forced farmers to quit because of

Show More
Related

  • How Did The Great Depression Affect Families

    765 Words  | 2 Pages

    Because if the stock market crashing in 1929, many people sold their stocks and rushed to the banks to retrieve their money. Because of the faulty banking system, many banks failed. This led to the many people who have very little left. A significant thing is the unemployment and the homelessness of the people. In 1929, 3% of the people have unemployment while during the Great Depression, it was around 25% of the people. The farmers of Oklahoma and Kansas was struck the hardest when The Dust Bowl started. The huge dust storms changed the way people lived their lives more than the rest of the US. THe rural farmers in those states are forced to move inward toward the urban areas to escape the harsh conditions of the dust

    Read More

  • Dust Bowl Odyssey Essay

    1061 Words  | 3 Pages

    The “Dust Bowl Odyssey” presented an initial perspective of why families migrated from drought-ridden, Dust Bowl, areas to California. Edward Carr cautions, “Interpretation plays a necessary part in establishing the facts of history, and because no existing interpretation is wholly objective, on interpretation is a good as another, and the facts of history are in principle not amendable to objective interpretation” (Carr, 1961, p. 31). Historians had to separate the prejudices, assumptions, and beliefs of the times in order to have a more objective reasoning of the migration. The migration had valid evidence that supported against the theory of the Dust Bowl being the only contributor. Rather there were other historical contributions to

    Read More

  • Okies and the Hardships of the Dust Bowl

    891 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • How Did The Dust Bowl Affect People

    790 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • How Has The Dust Bowl Changed Agriculture

    760 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Compare And Contrast The Dust Bowl

    453 Words  | 1 Pages

    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!

    Read More

  • What Caused The Dust Bowl Dbq

    588 Words  | 2 Pages

    3. The dust bowl caused many people to leave plains state and move to California. Two hundred thousand people moved to California and inflated the population. In Los

    Read More

  • What Caused The Dust Bowl?

    2377 Words  | 5 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • President Herbert Hoover As The Cause Of The Great Depression

    733 Words  | 2 Pages

    Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas were all victims. They suffered for hours on end of dust blowing through the air into their eyes, mouths and noses. Life could not survive the dustbowl either. Trees were once planted in hopes of collecting the dust, but instead the trees sucked all the water out of the ground. Making the dust even worse. Many tried to leave and find land elsewhere but nobody wanted them there because of low amounts of money.

    Read More

  • Dust Bowl: The Dirty Thirties and Its Impact

    906 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Dust Bowl Essay

    1207 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Key Factors Of The Dust Bowl

    712 Words  | 2 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • The Dust Bowl

    1050 Words  | 3 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Karen Hesse's 'Out Of The Dust'

    963 Words  | 2 Pages

    According to the book and article, the reason for the start of the Dust Bowl is described for the most part, in the same way. Both texts supported the idea that during World War 1, the Great Plains supplied people with wheat, and with the invention of bigger tractors they were able to farm more substantial amounts of land resulting in abundant harvests. However, this led to rents, bills, and mortgages, so when the war ended and Europe no longer needed their supply of wheat, the farmers had to pay the bills. Therefore, more cattle were squished into a smaller amount of land, and this eventually led to overgrazing, and the extensive plowing had also done significant damage to the soil. The once fertile soil became completely dry, and when the wind blew, the topsoil was blown off causing dust storms (Hesse 83). This shows that both sources agree that the reason for the start of the Dust Bowl involves human activity. Another similarity is that in the book, Karen Hesse describes that each time a dust storm swept in, wheat that was planted for harvest later in the year was flattened and destroyed. After each storm came rain, but whenever it rained, it was either too much or barely anything. In the articles, the authors describe many of the same devastating outcomes of the dust storm as well, “The wind and the flying dust cut off the wheat stalks at ground level and tore out the roots. Blowing dirt shifted from one field to another, burying crops not yet carried away by the wind,”(Holley). Both, the article and book are able to depict that agriculture suffered a lot due to the disastrous dust storms. Altogether, almost all of the facts are accurate in the book when compared to the two

    Read More

  • Dust Bowl Dbq

    585 Words  | 2 Pages

    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.

    Read More

More about The Negative Effects Of The Dust Bowl

Open Document