What Was The Importance Of Soil In The 1930's

One theory in Jared Diamond s Collapse is that soil degradation and erosion leads to insufficient agriculture and a society s demise. In Timothy Egan s The Worst Hard Time, he sets forth in specific and excruciating detail exactly what Diamond outlines in Collapse. Only Egan s book isn t theoretical. It isn t a survey of what s happened in other countries. It s about the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. It s about what happens, right here in the heart of America, when the land is misused, mistreated, and turns on those who depend on it.

While families migrated toward this region, the western plains were experiencing some of the greatest droughts to ever occur. In addition to this, “the massive plowing, plus overgrazing by cattle, largely destroyed the native grasses that held the once rich soil in place” (West 1). These settlers were farming on foreign land that they were absolutely new to and maintained the unyielding perception that “land could be shaped by human will” (Black Blizzard). Their rationale was so clouded by the belief that the resources present in the moment were limitless, that they did not see the accumulating cloud of dust slowly slithering across the land. These uneducated farmers were planting soil-depleting crops, which “caused the destruction of organic matter or the loss of minerals in excess of those

7 The concept of the soil conservation way to limit the plowing, and to stop the tractors to pick up and release dust into the sky If the act was not put into place the land would continue to get worse, but only until the sky came.

Vast numbers and kinds of organisms, mainly microorganisms, inhabit soil and depend on it for shelter, food, and water. Plants anchor themselves in soil, and from it they receive essential minerals and water. Terrestrial plants could not survive without soil, and because we depend on plants for our food, humans could not exist without soil either (Wiley, 2013).

One group in this particular article, Farming and the Dust Bowl During the Great Depression, that was affected by the event was the farmers. The reason the farmers were affected, was because when the Dust Bowl hit it was also during the Great Depression and if farmers couldn’t plant crops because the land was dry and currently in drought, which meant that they couldn’t make money, or just simply debt. “In the 1920s, many farmers found themselves in a continual cycle of debt.” (Library of Congress, Ushistory.org) They were also in debt because of expensive equipment and the crash of the stock market. “Their money problems stemmed from falling farm prices and the need to purchase expensive machinery. When the stock market crashed in 1929, sending

I watched a Ted Talk on YouTube called Ted x Huntsville, it was presented by Karen Wynne and was published October 1st, 2014. The topic that Wynne talked about was the concept of stopping treating soil like dirt. She started by stating a quote by Leonardo Da Vinci that said: “We know more about the celestial bodies than the soil under our feet”. This was an interesting way of introducing her talk since after saying we near nothing about earth she begun to tell us the difference between soil and dirt introducing the topic at hand. For soil she gave the basic definition that it was a mixture of sand, silt, and clay plus air holes, water, and organic matter and as for dirt she just simply washed her hands on her shirt as if it was nothing after playing with the soil. So, already she was hands on and showed that we humans don’t really care about our soil.

Farming practices were poorly used and this created America’s own desert known as the dust bowl. The nation had been suffering from a large drought during this time, and with no water the soil started to blow away. About 25,000 square miles of farmland was damaged (ABC News). The country was at it’s breaking point; with no money in the banks and a large portion of crops destroyed Americans had no idea what to do. The citizens were left with no help from the government.

The Great Depression started around 1930 when the stock market crashed in 1929. This meant that all banks and investors around the U.S. had went into a downward spiral, crippling the financial support of any business that had stocks/bonds were basically run into the ground since they had no income, nor could they sell anything since no-one had the money or credit for it. Companies had to lay off most of their employees since they had no currency to give for their wages, leaving thousands of people out of work and in poverty. The ones laid off had to live off the land and agriculture. This was very difficult since the dustbowl was going on during this time as well. Growing crops while multiple feet of dust are being blown around is highly difficult.

During the year of following WWl, the demand for farming had increased greatly. Many farms in the midwest continued to expand to meet the demand, tilling up prairie grasslands to make new fields for crops. After the demand was over, the AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Act )authorized the federal government to try and raise farm prices and force farmers to plant less (Foner 816). This worked to a point and forced many to leave their farms and move to the cities or to the west coast. The problem was during the early 1930’s the country was under a great drought, causing this now exposed soil to dry up even faster and begin to blow around. The winds would often blow for days, carrying soil particles as far east as New York City. Families that remained

Franklin D Roosevelt once said, “the history of every Nation is eventually written in the way in which it cares for its soil.” The United States began seeing sustainable management practices in farms, and healthier soil through this act. In 1982 through 2007, the United States soil erosion had declined by 43%” (Montanarella, 2015). Every year the United States loses about $400 billion dollars due to crop soil that is eroded. Soil is a limited resource and the largest resource for growing food, accommodating diverse ecosystems, and providing food resources. Therefore laws, acts, and provisions are necessary to protect this natural resource.

The microbes found in soil go hand in hand with the microbes found in our bodies, especially the gut microbiome. Soil is used to grow various plants and crops which we then ingest. As stated in Healthy Soil Microbes, Healthy People, we have completely destroyed soil microbes by overusing fertilizers and pesticides just like how we have destroyed our gut microbes by ingesting processed foods and large amounts of antibiotics. Soil microbes, including bacteria and fungi, form symbiotic relationships with plant roots to help provide the plant with many nutrients needed to survive. In order to restore and improve the soil once again, we need to reintroduce bacteria and fungi that are capable of repairing the damage. Through recent technological advances, the soil microbiome was genetically sequenced. This allows farmers and other scientists to understand which microorganisms are

While the drought was happening the farmers were trying to plow and plant and nothing was growing

This disaster was to become known as the “Dust Bowl.” Beginning in the early 1900’s, America’s great plains had been transformed from natural grasslands to wheat fields. The grasslands were heavily plowed without any thought or concern for what might be the consequences of removing the native grasses that had kept the soil in place. By the early 1930’s, the great plains began experiencing a drought and severe winds began to blow across the plains. They called these dust storms “black blizzards” because they reached as high as 10,000 feet in the air, spanned hundreds of miles, and, if severe enough, blocked sunlight from reaching the earth. They continued for over a decade and removed multiple feet of rich topsoil from the farm fields. The soil was carried across the United States and blew as far as 300 miles off the Atlantic

In Genesis 2:7, the bible tells us of the creation of mankind from the dust of the ground, a theme echoed throughout many other creation stories produced during the time of the bibles conception. In all of these the dirt or clay of earth is the key component from which gods draw upon to mold humans. This in turn leads one to wonder what was so significant about the earth, that ancient civilizations thought it was an essential part of their being? To answer this I believe it’s vital to understand the importance the soil of the earth played in these largely agricultural societies.

When you pick up a handful of soil from outside you are not only picking up soil you are picking up a handful of microbes. In that one handful there are many different varieties of living microbes, they range from algae, fungi, bacteria and many more. “A single teaspoon of that soil contains over 1,000,000,000 bacteria, about 120,000 fungi and 25,000 algae.”(Microbe World) They are found everywhere that you can think of on Earth, this includes the ground, air, plants and animals. Microbes are one of the oldest living things on Earth they have been around for billion of years and continue to live here under any conditions because they are constantly adapting to the environment that they live in. “These environments range from the boiling waters of hot springs in Yellowstone National Park to the freezing temperatures of Antarctica.” (Microbe World)