The Effects Of The Dust Bowl

This over farming diminished the nutrients in the ground and removed all of the grass and sod holding the dirt in place which resulted in it creating the giant dust storms. Storms like this have happened in the past but not to the same degree. He mentions how the climate in the Southern Plains is problematic as there is little rain and every so many years there are big storms that tear throughout the area. The difference between the storms that occurred before the Dust Bowl, is that there was grass and sod keeping the soil in place instead of just bare earth with shallow roots for anything that managed to cover the earth. Worster claims capitalism and the farming practices are responsible for this as the farmers strive to make a profit without caring about the state of the land is in. As long as they can earn money, the farmers will continue in these practices.

During the Dust Bowl some people made the decision to stay at their farms. Huge drifts of dirt piled up on homesteaders’ doors, came in the cracks of windows and came down from the ceilings. Barnyards and pastures were buried in dirt. After about 850 million tons of topsoil was blown away in 1935 alone. The government responded to this by saying “Unless something is done, the western plains will be as arid as the Arabian desert.”

“ According to the WPA, three-fifths of all first-time rural relief cases in the Great Plains area were directly related to drought, with a disproportionate amount of cases being farmers (68%) and especially tenant farmers (70% of the 68%). However, it is not known how many of the remaining cases (32%) were indirectly affected by drought. The WPA report also noted that 21% of all rural families in the Great Plains area were receiving federal emergency relief by 1936 (Link et al., 1937); the number was as high as 90% in hard-hit counties (Warrick, 1980).

The Dust Bowl was a very desperate and troublesome time for America. The southwestern territories were in turmoil due to the arid effect of the drought causing no fertile soils. As the rest of America was being dragged along with the stock market crash and higher prices of wheat and crops since the producing areas couldn't produce. This was a streak of bad luck for the Americans as they were in a deep despair for a quite some time. Luckily Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to shine some light with a new deal.

The livestock was another group that was affected in the dust bowl. When the AAA demanded the farmers to plow over there land they killed 6 million young pigs were slaughtered. Many of those pigs just starved because the farmers were no longer working so they could not feed them. When the dust bowl came money farmers and ranchers livestock were killed and when they cut them open there was only dust in there lungs and guts. The cattle grazing was reduced and millions of more acres were plowed and planted. With this happening I can assume that the markets did not have very much meat and a lot of produce.

It has been 76 years since the dust bowl had ended. The dust bowl swept across Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Kansas throughout 1930-1940. Before the dust bowl many people traveled to these states for good land. The dust bowl was caused by a drought and strong winds. The dust from the drought was being blown around by the strong winds and covering everything. The dust bowl is famous for being the worst and the longest disaster.

During the Great Depression a Midwestern phenomenon called the Dust Bowl affected many lives of newly settled Americans throughout the Great Plains region. Otherwise known as the “Dirty Thirties”, a storm of dry weather caused farmers and villagers to abandon their homes in hope to survive the deadly threat of the storm. The Dust Bowl was a big contributing factor to the Great Depression agriculturally, and economically.

The Dust Bowl was a terrible experience during a horrible time. In the 1930s post World War I America had a total collapse of the stock market causing the Great Depression affecting the economy on a global scale, but hitting hardest at home in the United States. However, the economy wasn’t the only thing that was hit hard during this time; seemingly unstoppable dust storms ravaged farming land from the west to east coast hitting hardest in the great plains in the middle section the the US became known as the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl was not entirely a causation of bad luck on nature, it was caused by an increasing demand for crops, advancements in farming technology, while the final nail in the coffin was a lack of rain.

The dust bowl was considered the “Worst hard time” in american history. The Dust Bowl was a big cloud of dust that took place during the 1930’s in the middle of the Great Depression. The dust bowl was located in the southern great plains as it affected states like Kansas, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado. The three main causes of the Dust Bowl were drought (Doc E), amount of land being harvest (Doc D), and the death shortgrass prairie (Doc C).

The two things that contributed to the start of the dust bowl are, over-farming and drought. The dust bowl was a terrible dust storm that devastated lives of thousands in the Southern Great Plains. The dust bowl occurred in the 1930’s. People called this time the blackest year.

Have a minute, great. Because this may be the only chance for you to hear about this great disaster the dust bowl or known as the dirty thirties. In the 1930’s there was an horrible disaster called the dust bowl. The people who lived through the dust bowl, lived through a nightmare, that nightmare didn’t end till ten years later. Ten years, of drought wind dirt that’s a long time for a storm (Campbell __).

In one of the most fertile places in the United States, one of the nation's worst disasters occurred, the Dust Bowl. It began when an area in the Midwest was severely affected by an intense drought throughout the 1930s or what proceeded to be called the Dirty Thirties. The drought killed crops that had kept the rich soil in place, and when the strong root system was not there the soil was not kept grounded. Due to the soil left with no crops, the high and strong winds blew the topsoil away. This drought lasted for almost a decade, and during that time, many people had to learn new ways to adapt, make new innovations, or move to a different region. Though the difficulties it had brought about were

The 120,000 square-mile area the Dust Bowl destroyed was Kansas, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Colorado. The Dust Bowl was a name given to the Great Plains region that was struck with a drought in the 1930’s. Before the Depression, many of the farmers in the Great Plains were over producing wheat due to the war. Farmers plowed more land and removed grass in order to make more room for their crops. Then the Depression hit and the demand for wheat decreased. Farmers did not need as much land as before so they left a majority of it unoccupied and bare. Since there was no grass to hold all the dirt down, when winds would pick up the loose dirt it would create dense dust clouds, that were also known as “black blizzards”. These storms ruined

Dust Bowl, The Southern Plains in the 30’s written by Donald Worster and published in 1979, is an informative text on the Great Plains during the Great Depression. Donald Worster is a credible author because he not only earned a Ph.D. from Yale in environmental history, but he also had previously written a book on the environment and the economy.

“With the gales came the dust. Sometimes it was so thick that it completely hid the sun. Visibility ranged from nothing to fifty feet, the former when the eyes were filled with dirt which could not be avoided, even with goggles ”( Richardson 59). The Dust Bowl was a huge dust storm in the 1930s that stretched from western Kansas to New Mexico. People that lived in that area could not step outside or they would get dust in their lungs. Livestock could not breath or find food sources. Thousands of people lost their homes due to the storm. Changes in farming and agriculture in the early 1900s altered the landscape and soil creating the perfect environment for the Dust Bowl and impacted living conditions and economic policy.