Farming In 1930s America

Through the period of 1865-1900, America’s agriculture underwent a series of changes .Changes that were a product of influential role that technology, government policy and economic conditions played. To extend on this idea, changes included the increase on exported goods, do the availability of products as well as the improved traveling system of rail roads. In the primate stages of these developing changes, farmers were able to benefit from the product, yet as time passed by, dissatisfaction grew within them. They no longer benefited from the changes (economy went bad), and therefore they no longer supported railroads. Moreover they were discontented with the approach that the government had taken towards the situation.

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

To keep the Great Plains residents healthy, “The Red Cross opened six emergency hospitals to deal with the crisis” (Brown 37). This shows that the Dust Bowl crisis got so bad that organizations like the Red Cross enlisted to help the Dust Bowl residents get back on their feet and become happy and healthy once again. To help with the situation, “The federal government developed programs to aid Dust Bowl residents” get back on their feet. This reveals that everyone had to join in the help get the Great Plains get back to its former glory and ability to produce crops. This also shows that the federal government was working to help prevent a disaster this big from occurring again. Finally “The long dry spell ended in the autumn of 1939. Rain drenched the plains for the two days and nights” (Heinrichs 39). This is important because nature finally ran its course and nourished the water-deprived soil. This shows that the long-awaited end to the Dust Bowl and drought had finally ended, bringing hope to not only Dust Bowl residents but all of the United States. The Dust Bowl, an event that caused so much destruction to the Great Plains and the American economy, was finally

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.

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”

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

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

Farmers did well after the Civil War and into the 1880s with plentiful rainfall and easy credit from banks. In the 1890s, however, American farmers suffered from drought, poor harvests, restrictive tariff and fiscal policies, low commodity prices, and competition from abroad. A downward swing in the business cycle exacerbated their plight, and many farmers in the Plains filed for

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

During the 1930s, the United States faced various struggles such as The Great Depression- a time in which farmers suffered severely through many challenges. One of the challenges faced by farmers was the Dust Bowl tragedy; a dust storm affecting many farms throughout the midwest. The tragic Dust Bowl was a consequence due to lack of rainfall in the dry prairie lands, decreasing crop growth, and overproduction in farming causing more exposed land. It occurred because of advancements in farming technology, drought in the Great Plains, and the harvesting of grasslands.

In the early 1930s through the 1936, a massive event called the Dust Bowl occurred also known as the Dirty Thirties, dramatically affected areas within Oklahoma, Kansas, and Northern Texas due to extensive windstorms. This event forced numerous people to evacuate their hometowns. The Dust Bowl had a significant impact on society, it caused farmers to have no control of their agriculture because of the dried up land. Once the land dried up there was no way to renovate or replace the soil. This dilemma lead to more citizens to depend on the government for help, financially.

Drought had caused the soil to become dry and loose by early 1930. This occurs mostly because the area most hurt by the Dust Bowl had once been grassland, in the early 1900s they had been converted into wheat lands because that was more lucrative. “…and the dust storms of the following decade revealed, a self-destructive culture, cutting away the ground from under people’s feet.” (Worster pg 44).

With many farmers having such high yields, there was an abundance of crops so the prices fell and a farmer had to plant more in order to have enough money to support their families. The Enlarged Homestead Act guaranteed 320 acres of land to farmers who were willing to take land that were considered to be marginal and could not be irrigated well. They plowed up the virgin soil and planted acres and acres of golden wheat, leaving the land vulnerable to the elements after the yearly harvest. The farmers also implemented the use of fossil fuel ran machinery that made it easier to plow up hundreds of acres in a short period of time, which exposed even more soil than what would have been open to the elements had the farming been done by an animal pulled plow. The massive influx of farmers because of that act caused major soil erosion which was made worse by the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.