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Impact of agriculture on environment
Impact of agriculture on environment
What caused the dust bowl essay summary
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Many believe the Dust Bowl was caused solely by bad weather, but Egan shows a multitude of factors that led to the catastrophe. In Timothy Egan’s book, The Worst Hard Time, Egan believes that the syndicate and government, overproduction of the land, and drought were all factors that caused the Dust Bowl. First, Egan believes that the Chicago Syndicate, as well as the government, took part in causing the Dust Bowl. The Worst Hard Time began with an explanation of how the land was inhabited after the Comanche were kicked off. Texas wanted an extravagant state capitol building after the Civil War. In order to fund this building, Texas agreed to give land to whoever would take on the endeavor of building the structure. The Chicago Syndicate decided …show more content…
Egan notes, “No group of people took a more dramatic leap in lifestyle or prosperity, in such a short time, than wheat farmers on the Great Plains” (Egan 42). The revenue from selling wheat far exceeded the cost of producing the wheat, so the large profit attracted people to produce more and more wheat. On top of the high profit from wheat, the Great War caused the price of wheat to rise even more. The supply of wheat rose with the price, but Egan points to information to demonstrate that the rapid increase in production can lead to overproduction, which is damaging to the land. Also, the invention of the tractor also lead to overproduction of the land by creating the ability to dramatically cut the time it took to harvest acres. When the prices for wheat began to fall due to overproduction, this caused the farmers to produce even more output to be able to make the same earnings as when the prices were higher. The government also played a part in promoting the overproduction of the land. The Federal Bureau of Soils claimed that, “The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possessed. It is the one resource that cannot be exhausted, that cannot be used up” (Egan 51). Egan points to factors such as a high profit margin, the Great War, tractors, increased outputs when wheat prices fell, and governmental claims that caused the people to overproduce the land of the Great Plains. Egan then gives examples of how the overproduction destroyed the land. Egan explains that the farmers saw their only way out was to plant more wheat. This overproduction tore up the grass of the Great Plains, thus making the land more susceptible to the severe dust storms of the Dust
After the civil war, America found itself with a high production rate, resulting in overproduction and falling of prices, as well as an increase on economic stress and the beginning of panic and prosperity cycles. The wars demand for products had called for a more efficient production system; therefore new machinery had come into place. New tools, such as the reaper, shown in document D, the wheat harvest of 1880, were introduced and facilitated production for farmers, making overproduction more probable. Variation on prices than begun to occur as shown in document A, Agriculture prices in 1865-1900, where a greater amount of goods became available for a more convenient price. This had farmers in distress, for they were losing more money than they were making.
The Roaring Twenties approached and the citizens in Colorado were facing rough times. In 1920, many people such as farm owners, manufacturers, and even miners were having a hard time making a living due to an economic downfall. The farmers especially, where facing the toughest of times. The price of various farm-grown goods like wheat, sugar beets, and even cattle was dropping because their goods were no longer needed by the public. Wheat had dropped in price from $2.02 in 1918 to $0.76 by the time 1921 came around. Sadly, the land that they were using to grow wheat became dry and many farmers had to learn to grow through “dryland farming” which became very popular in the eastern plains from 1910 to 1930 (Hard Times: 1920 - 1940). Apple trees began to die due to the lack of desire for apples, poor land, and decreased prices. Over the course of World War I, the prices of farm goods began to increase slowly. Farmers were not the only one facing this economic hardship while others in big cities were enjoying the Roaring Twenties.
The Worst Hard Time is all about surviving the dust bowl days in the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, commonly referred to as no man’s land. The author, Timothy Egan, wrote this because he knew the sources for first hand accounts were dwindling as many people who were alive during that time are now growing old. Egan begins by describing breakup of the XIT ranch which covered most of the Texas panhandle. All this land was then sold in small sections to new homesteaders, or nesters, who then began to turn sod, till the land plant wheat, corn, and other crops on this newfound inexhaustible resource. Egan describes the forces that led to European settlement of the Great Plains. The U.S. government cleared the land of the Indians and bison by the
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.
The nature of the Southern Plains soils and the periodic influence of drought could not be changed, but the technological abuse of the land could have been stopped. This is not to say that mechanized agriculture irreparably damaged the land-it did not. New and improved implements such as tractors, one-way disk plows, grain drills, and combines reduced plowing, planting, and harvesting costs and increased agricultural productivity. Increased productivity caused prices to fall, and farmers compensated by breaking more sod for wheat. At the same time, farmers gave little thought to using their new technology in ways to conserve the
The country at the time was in the deepest and soon to be longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world and this caused years of over-cultivation of wheat, because “during the laissez-faire, expansionist 1920’s the plains were extensively and put to wheat - turned into highly mechanized factory farms that produced highly unprecedented harvests” (Worster 12). ¬The farmer’s actions were prompted by the economic decline America was facing. With the economy in a recession, farmers were looking for a way to make a living and in 1930 wheat crop were becoming very popular. In 1931 the wheat crop was considered a bumper crop with over twelve million bushels of wheat. Wheat was emerging all over the plains. The wheat supply forced the price down from sixty-eight cents/bushel in July 1930 to twenty-five cents/bushel in July 1931. Many farmers went broke and others abandoned their fields, but most decided to stay despite the unfavorable
The period between 1880 and 1900 was a boom time for American Politics. The country was finally free of the threat of war, and many of its citizens were living comfortably. However, as these two decades went by, the American farmer found it harder and harder to live comfortably. Crops such as cotton and wheat, once the sustenance of the agriculture industry, were selling at prices so low that it was nearly impossible for farmers to make a profit off them. Furthermore, improvement in transportation allowed foreign competition to materialize, making it harder for American farmers to dispose of surplus crop. Mother Nature was also showing no mercy with grasshoppers, floods, and major droughts that led to a downward spiral of business that devastated many of the nation’s farmers. As a result of the agricultural depression, numerous farms groups, most notably the Populist Party, arose to fight what the farmers saw as the reasons for the decline in agriculture. During the final twenty years of the nineteenth century, many farmers in the United States saw monopolies and trusts, railroads, and money shortages and the loss in value of silver as threats to their way of life, all of which could be recognized as valid complaints.
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 was the name given to the Great Plains region devastated by drought in 1930’s when America was going through the Great Depression. The 150,000 square-mile area included Oklahoma, Texas and sections of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico. This area had little rainfall, light soil, and high winds, a destructive combination. When the drought struck from 1934 to 1937, the soil lacked a strong 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 dust storms wreaked havoc, choking cattle and pasture lands. The black blizzards drove 60 percent of the population from the region.
Some of the many contributing factors that cause a dust bowl include poor agricultural practices, extended periods of drought, high temperatures and wind erosion. The main contributor to the dust bowl was the poor agricultural practices. Farming and agriculture was such an important task for farmers to keep up with because if farmers failed to keep up with their land and crops, then the crops and land that was growing would begin to deteriorate into compost. Once broken down into little grains of dirt and dust, the wind would pick it up in bulk amounts and travel throughout the country gathering more and more as it goes on. Finally, a huge ...
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
During the 1930s many families were encouraged to move into the Southern plains and begin farming. This push for more farming and even new methods of farming came from the government’s efforts to get past the depression, produce more crops, and boost the economy. Farming would help these families...
The dust bowl was caused by a severe drought that was caused by winds picking up the soil farmers would leave behind due to not rotating their crops. Warnings against the soil eroding were ignored. Dust storms eventually whipped across the Great Plains; choking and killing people and animals. Eventually the dust storms reached populated cities like New York and Washington D.C. Warnings against the soil eroding were ignored. "God didn't create this land around here to be plowed up," said Melt White, a teenager during the Dust Bowl. He also has a whole chapter for chapter for Don Hartwell, a farmer who kept a journal during the worst of the drought years. “Don Hartwell tightened his grip on the land, holding on to it because he had nothing else.” He was greatly determined to stay in the land even with everything coming down.
In the early 1920’s a series of unfortunate events contributed to the Dust Bowl. The first few contributions were drought and strong winds. Soon dust storms started sprouting up around the midwest. As the amount of storms increased more citizens scrambled away. Turning the midwestern areas into the Dust Bowl. And to top it off all of this was happening at the beginning of the Great Depression, which began in 1929. Which was mostly caused by multiple stocks crashing. Causing great ecological and economical misery for everyone. Leading the oakies towards the coast of California.
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 and 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” is referring to a time during the 1930’s where the Great Plains region was drastically devastated by drought. All of the including 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. Therefore it was easy for the