The Dust Bowl was a period of time in the Great Depression where midwest farmland was destroyed by droughts and dust storms. From 1930 to 1939, the agricultural workers in states such as Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas all suffered from these poor conditions. The Dust Bowl came about due to many factors and a bit of bad luck. During WW1, the government urged the farmers to produce more wheat, so farmers dug up lots of native plants and planted wheat. The farmers were selling very well, until the Great Depression hit. At the time, many farmers decided to plow up even more land and plant more crops so they could earn enough money with the low prices for food. By the 1930s, much of the land in the midwest had been plowed up, the soil wasn’t connected to the ground very well. Then, a drought hit the midwest and would last for nearly a decade. The poor soil paired up with a drought, made the dirt easily blown away by wind. These conditions were all factors in the creation of the Dust Bowl.
When the dust bowl hit, many farmers fell victim to the disaster. They saw that lots of their livestock ended up blind and were suffocated with all the dust in the air. Farmers faced the same problems and it was near impossible to see through many of the storms. All the dust in the air caused some people to develop a condition called “Dust Pneumonia”, which caused them to feel chest pain and made it very hard to breathe. The dust wasn’t just contained to the midwest however, some dust extended all across the United States. There were storms which went to Chicago, New York, Washington D.C., even ships in the Atlantic ocean were covered with dust. These conditions made it very hard for farmers to maintain a living, so some ended up leaving their homes in search of a new life.
This migration worried the government, which decided to help farmers maintain a living in the midwest. They created Soil Erosion Service and the Prairie States Forestry Project in 1935 to help farmers combat the soil erosion problems. The government also paid farmers to use new methods to reform planting. The government sponsored these programs until the end of the Dust Bowl in 1939, when rains finally hit the midwest. The Dust Bowl raised awareness that the government needed to make sure that the environment wouldn’t be destroyed so that another terrible event like this wouldn’t happen again.
Source:
https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/dust-bowl
https://www.aaas.org/dust-bowl-wake-call-environmental-practices
https://www.thoughtco.com/worst-us-environmental-disasters-1203696
I enjoyed reading your post, and I liked how you elaborated on the causes of the Dust Bowl. I would also like to clarify why plowing the land to grow wheat during WWI was so problematic. The farmers' cultivation of the region displaced the native, deep-rooted grasses that normally trapped soil and moisture even during periods of drought and high winds. During the Dust Bowl, strong winds picked up the loose, dry dirt and dust storms were formed. The farmers’ were unaware of the consequences of their own actions and this ultimately led to their demise.
ReplyDeleteSource: https://www.britannica.com/place/Dust-Bowl
I really enjoyed your post, I liked how you talked about how the US became the "Dust Bowl", both symbolically and physically through the great depression.
ReplyDelete