Dust Bowl DBQ

As the years went by, farmers gained more advanced machines to harvest their crops. When the farmers gained new machines, they ended up over farming their land because the machines could harvest more crops in shorter time. In 1879, 10 million crops were harvested by a horse-drawn plow,  1899, 50 million crops were harvested by middle-aged machines, and 105 million crops were harvested by tractors in 1929  (Document D). Timothy Egan stated “Folkers plowed nearly his entire square mile,and then paid to rent nearby property and ripped up that grass as well” (Document C). However, the machines and over farming was not the only thing that caused the Dust Bowl.

The first main cause of the Dust Bowl was Destruction of Prairie Grass. “The story of the southern plains in the 1930’s is essentially about dust storms, when the earth ran amok(DocA).” Donald Worster means the earth is total chaos and the fact that it had no control as it usually would with normal weather or normal conditions. “Grass is what holds the earth together(DocB).”The sheepherder says that because he wants to explain that grass can absorb rainwater and prevent erosion.Destruction of Prairie Grass helped cause the Dust Bowl because when there’s no grass the soil will eventually turn into dust if there is not enough rain to sustain the planted crops.

The Dust Bowl, battering the Midwest for nearly a decade with high winds, bad farming techniques, and drought, became a pivotal point in American history. The wind storm that seemed relentless beginning in the early 1930’s until its spell ended in 1939, affected the lives of tens of thousands of Americans and the broader agriculture industry. The catastrophic effects of the Dust Bowl took place most prominently around the Great Plains, otherwise known as the farming belt, including states such as Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas, which were hit extraordinarily hard. Millions of farming acres destroyed by poor farming techniques was a major contributor to what is considered to be one of the worst man-made environmental disasters in American history. This period resulted in almost a decade of unstable farming and economic despair. Thousands of families sought government assistance in order to survive. Luckily, government aid to farmers and new agriculture programs that were introduced to help save the nation’s agriculture industry benefited families and helped the Great Plains recover from the Dust Bowl. Furthermore, the poor conditions in the farm belt were also compounded by the Great Depression as it was in full swing as the Dust Bowl began to worsen. In addition, World War I was also underway which caused a high demand for agricultural products, such as wheat, corn, and potatoes to be at its peak, which lured many people to the farm belt with the false expectation that farming

The Dust Bowl was a series of devastating events that occurred in the 1930’s. It affected not only crops, but people, too. Scientists have claimed it to be the worst drought in the United States in 300 years. It all began because of “A combination of a severe water shortage and harsh farming techniques,” said Kimberly Amadeo, an expert in economical analysis. (Amadeo). Because of global warming, less rain occurred, which destroyed crops. The crops, which were the only things holding the soil in place, died, which then caused the wind to carry the soil with it, creating dust storms. (Amadeo). In fact, according to Ken Burns, an American film maker, “Some 850 million tons of topsoil blew away in 1935 alone. "Unless something is done," a government report predicted, "the western plains will be as arid as the Arabian desert." (Burns). According to Cary Nelson, an English professor, fourteen dust storms materialized in 1932, and in 1933, there were 48 dust storms. Dust storms raged on in the Midwest for about a decade, until finally they slowed down, and stopped. Although the dust storms came to a halt, there was still a lot of concern. Thousands of crops were destroyed, and farmers were afraid that the dust storm would happen

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

One major cause of that Dust Bowl was severe droughts during the 1930’s. The other cause was capitalism. Over-farming and grazing in order to achieve high profits killed of much of the plain’s grassland and when winds approached, nothing was there to hold the devastated soil on the ground.

During the Great Depression farmers had to produce more wheat in order to turn a profit. They expanded their fields, and dug up natural drought resistant grasses, leaving the top soil vulnerable to wind erosion. Plow based farming also played a big role in making the top soil vulnerable to wind erosion. The severe drought taking place at the same time made things worse. Wind kicked up

Though most everyone has heard of the Dust Bowl, many people don’t actually know what it is. “When rain stopped falling in the Midwest, farm fields began to dry up” (The Dust Bowl). Much of the nation’s crops couldn’t grow, causing major economic struggle. "The Homestead Act of 1862, which provided settlers with 160 acres of public land, was followed by the Kinkaid Act of 1904 and the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909” (Dust Bowl). This caused many inexperienced farmers to jump on this easy start of a career. Because of this, farmers in the Midwest had practiced atrocious land management for years. This included over plowing the land and using the same crops year after year. In this way, lots of fertile soil had gotten lost. This helped windstorms gather topsoil from the land, and whip it into huge clouds; dust storms. Hot, dry, and windy, almost the entire middle section of the United States was directly affected. The states affected were South

The Dust Bowl was a treacherous storm, which occurred in the 1930's, that affected the midwestern people, for example the farmers, and which taught us new technologies and methods of farming. As John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west- from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out. Carloads, caravans, homeless and hungry; twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless - restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do - to lift, to push, to pull, to pick, to cut - anything, any burden to bear, for food. The kids are hungry. We got no place

The timeline of the dustbowl characterizes the fall of agriculture during the late 1920s, primarily the area in and surrounding the Great Plains. The Dust Bowl was created by a disruption in the areas natural balance. “With the crops and native vegetation gone, there was nothing to hold the topsoil to the ground” (“Dust Bowl and” 30). Agricultural expansion and dry farming techniques caused mass plowing and allowed little of the land to go fallow. With so little of the deeply rooted grass remaining in the Great Plains, all it took was an extended dry season to make the land grow dry and brittle. When most of the land had been enveloped by the grass dust storms weren’t even a yearly occurrence, but with the exponentiation of exposed land, the winds had the potential to erode entire acres. This manmade natural disaster consumed such a large amount of the South's agriculture that it had repercussions on the national level. The Dust Bowl was a “97-million-acre section

The early 1900's were a time of turmoil for farmers in the United States, especially in the Great Plains region. After the end of World War I, overproduction by farmers resulted in low prices for crops. When farmers first came to the Midwest, they farmed as much wheat as they could because of the higher prices and

What was the cause for all this? Well there are three main reasons, Overplowing farms, grass being destroyed by new farming technology, and drought to finish it off, the Dust Bowl was created. Over plowing was a major factor in causing the dust bowl. According to timothy egan in The Worst Hard Time, when there was 10 million acres of farmland in the 1890’s there was not a lot of problems with the farmland.

Natural Disasters have always been a major part of history. Disasters have helped shape history and expand mankind’s knowledge of atmospheric sciences. The influence of these disasters also can’t be ignored. One such disaster that left its mark on history is the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl was a period in the 30s in which severe dust storms swept across Southern plains of the United States (Dust Bowl). The Dust Bowl got its name when it first appeared in a newspaper article on April 15, 1935 (Shum). The Dust Bowl occurred due to widespread drought in the region and severe erosion (Long 1). Drought and violent winds caused widespread crop failure and the discouraged farmers did not practice proper erosion prevention measures (Long 1). Consequently,

If you were alive in the 1930’s you may recall the Dust Bowl era and if you lived in the eastern part of the United States you lived in the storm. The Dust Bowl was the era in which a drought lasted from 1930 to1935. It formed with contributions from humans, it affected the people in the storm dearly.The supply and demand, caused people to lose land, money, and had to live in devastating conditions.

The dust bowl was a long period of time of severe dust storms that created major damage in the ecology and agriculture. During the 1930’s there was a severe drought and failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion. During the drought of the 1930’s all the dry soil turned into dust which the strong winds blew away in huge clouds that sometimes made the sky turn black. The “black blizzard” or “black rollers” traveled across the country reaching as far as the east coast and hitting major cities. Some of the most important causes of the dust bowl were the major drought and wind erosion.