Dust Bowl Drought

Drought, destroying the natural grass, and increased mechanization caused a series of terrible storms lasting almost a decade. The Dust Bowl is so important today because there is a high demand for food and water since more people live here in America. We know not to make to same mistakes that farmers made almost 90 years ago. The Dust Bowl serves as a warning for the future, a warning to keep our lands healthy and always look

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.

The Dust Bowl occurred during The Great Depression in the 1930's. Which was an especially dreadful time for it to happen. Many people were impoverished or were on the brink of poverty. Making the man-made natural disaster all the more devastating.

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

This is something that leads up to the dust bowl from happening. “Dry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie grasses. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. Gradually, the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. Among the natural elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating.”("The Dust Bowl") What it is explaining is that all the dust that gathered up by the farms and plantations, was a cause to the dust bowl since farmers had left their productivity, of growing their crops, behind. Most of the families had been their for centuries, so it was really hard for them to leave most of their homes and natural elements behind as they tried to travel north. Although farms and industries were forced to plant in the dry plain, it caused a mass corruption in almost every state in the United States. Having to be forced to plant caused a mass corruption after the dust bowl. Cattle died and farmers had to give up their land and find somewhere else to live, this analyzes that farmers were uncomfortable with working in these

In the years leading to 1930, the Great Plains experienced a healthy amount of rain. The drought began in 1930 when the rain ceased. That year proved tough for farmers in the Great Plains, but they had no idea what was yet to come. In 1931, dust storms began to sweep through the Great Plains. Behind the dust, families stayed hidden inside their homes using wet clothes and such to guard the window sills and door frames. The families affected by the Dust Bowl were trapped inside of their homes for the six years of raging dust storms. The Great Depression was a number of years that consisted of workers being laid off, no job openings available, and an overall economic low in the United States. The Great Depression, which started in the years leading up to the drought, resulted in poor living conditions, including little to no income, scarce food, and unclean water. The Dust Bowl amplified those conditions for the affected families. (Steinbeck, Lewis, “Dust Bowl”

The dust storm was a hard decade for most people. People struggling to survive in the dark dust flying around, making everyone sick and causing people to get serious diseases. My opinion is that, The Dust Bowl negatively affected people who lived there in a personal way. The reasons are that diseases spread around and dust was everywhere, life was hard during the Dust Bowl, and it was a depressing, stressful time for people in the Dust Bowl and it was the worst man-made disaster.

The Dust Bowl negatively affected people who lived there in a personal way. The dust bowl was one of the worst natural disasters in the U.S.

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

In the early 1900s crops for farmers where it was fertile and productive investment, until the climate started to heat up and dry out all of the land. The wind was turning the soil the wrong side up (Egan, p. 114). The High Plains were the most affected, and the wind was the contributing element that made it dangerous for people to live there. In the early 1930s, people were forced out of their homes and had to head somewhere safe. The climate had been dangerous with the wind erosions for a decade or so, and the dust was tearing away the crops, putting dust and other particles in the air, making it thick and hard for people to see when traveling across the country. People were afraid that in the future they would not be able to survive in the High Plains and feel secure that it was a safe place. The Worst Hard Time focused on the Dust Bowl and how it affected people in the High Plains. Parched land was one of the main conditions that lead to despair being found among the people living in the High Plains. Another issue that brought up the theme of despair in the text/book, is the economics of the Dust Bowl. The Great Depression was a major effect leaving many people without their life savings. Lastly, the Dust Bowl coincided with the events leading to Black Sunday, as the winds and the declining economy started to take a toll on people and their homes. In states like Texas and Oklahoma there was dust in people’s eyes, and they were unable to see anything in front of them.

Large numbers of people migrated to the grasslands and plowed the areas to farm. Over time, the soil wore out and the cycle of rain stopped, causing the soil to blow away. The natural way that wildlife lived was disrupted by civilization, and since nature was damaged, the mutual cooperation between humans, land, animals, and soil failed. Man wanted to proceed forward, but their desire for wealth caused them a Great Depression, and a horrendous storm that wiped away their land. The expansion to the frontier and the wearing of the soil was not to make a living, but to bring more money to the people even though the soil was not capable of growing a sizable amount of crops. The point that Worster clearly makes throughout his book was that capitalism caused the problem. He believed the two linked disasters, The Dust Bowl and The Great Depression were entirely man-made because of flaws in American society. Worster could not define capitalism with one simple meaning, but says that man viewed the land as a business. They worked the land until they could not work it anymore, and even then, they continued to plow the fields trying to get every last grain that would provide them with more money. Worster wrote that man had a right to use the land because "the highest economic rewards go to those who have done the most to extract nature from all it can yield" (Worster 6). Therefore, the land was

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