dust bowl cause and effect essay

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By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 24, 2023 | Original: October 27, 2009

A dust storm roars across an empty field.

The Dust Bowl was the name given to the drought-stricken southern plains region of the United States, which suffered severe dust storms during a drought in the 1930s. As high winds and choking dust swept the region from Texas to Nebraska, people and livestock were killed and crops failed across the entire region. The Dust Bowl intensified the crushing economic impacts of the Great Depression and drove many farming families on a desperate migration in search of work and better living conditions.

What Caused the Dust Bowl?

The Dust Bowl was caused by several economic and agricultural factors, including federal land policies, changes in regional weather, farm economics and other cultural factors. After the Civil War , a series of federal land acts coaxed pioneers westward by incentivizing farming in the Great Plains.

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. These acts led to a massive influx of new and inexperienced farmers across the Great Plains.

Many of these late 19th and early 20th-century settlers lived by the superstition “rain follows the plow.” Emigrants, land speculators, politicians and even some scientists believed that homesteading and agriculture would permanently affect the climate of the semi-arid Great Plains region, making it more conducive to farming.

Manifest Destiny

This false belief was linked to Manifest Destiny —an attitude that Americans had a sacred duty to expand west. A series of wet years during the period created a further misunderstanding of the region’s ecology and led to the intensive cultivation of increasingly marginal lands that couldn’t be reached by irrigation.

Rising wheat prices in the 1910s and 1920s and increased demand for wheat from Europe during World War I encouraged farmers to plow up millions of acres of native grassland to plant wheat, corn and other row crops. But as the United States entered the Great Depression , wheat prices plummeted. In desperation, farmers tore up even more grassland in an attempt to harvest a bumper crop and break even.

Crops began to fail with the onset of drought in 1931, exposing the bare, over-plowed farmland. Without deep-rooted prairie grasses to hold the soil in place, it began to blow away. Eroding soil led to massive dust storms and economic devastation—especially in the Southern Plains.

When Was the Dust Bowl?

The Dust Bowl, also known as “the Dirty Thirties,” started in 1930 and lasted for about a decade, but its long-term economic impacts on the region lingered much longer.

Severe drought hit the Midwest and southern Great Plains in 1930. Massive dust storms began in 1931. A series of drought years followed, further exacerbating the environmental disaster.

By 1934, an estimated 35 million acres of formerly cultivated land had been rendered useless for farming, while another 125 million acres—an area roughly three-quarters the size of Texas—was rapidly losing its topsoil.

Regular rainfall returned to the region by the end of 1939, bringing the Dust Bowl years to a close. The economic effects, however, persisted. Population declines in the worst-hit counties—where the agricultural value of the land failed to recover—continued well into the 1950s.

How the Dust Bowl Made Americans Refugees in Their Own Country

As they traveled west from the drought‑ravaged Midwest, American‑born migrants were viewed as disease‑ridden intruders who would sponge off the government.

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‘Black Blizzards’ Strike America

During the Dust Bowl period, severe dust storms, often called “black blizzards,” swept the Great Plains. Some of these carried topsoil from Texas and Oklahoma as far east as Washington, D.C. and New York City , and coated ships in the Atlantic Ocean with dust.

Billowing clouds of dust would darken the sky, sometimes for days at a time. In many places, the dust drifted like snow and residents had to clear it with shovels. Dust worked its way through the cracks of even well-sealed homes, leaving a coating on food, skin and furniture.

Some people developed “dust pneumonia” and experienced chest pain and difficulty breathing. It’s unclear exactly how many people may have died from the condition. Estimates range from hundreds to several thousand people.

On May 11, 1934, a massive dust storm two miles high traveled 2,000 miles to the East Coast, blotting out monuments such as the Statue of Liberty and the U.S. Capitol.

The worst dust storm occurred on April 14, 1935. News reports called the event Black Sunday. A wall of blowing sand and dust started in the Oklahoma Panhandle and spread east. As many as three million tons of topsoil are estimated to have blown off the Great Plains during Black Sunday.

An Associated Press news report coined the term “Dust Bowl” after the Black Sunday dust storm.

New Deal Programs

President Franklin D. Roosevelt established a number of measures to help alleviate the plight of poor and displaced farmers. He also addressed the environmental degradation that had led to the Dust Bowl in the first place.

As part of Roosevelt’s New Deal , Congress established the Soil Erosion Service and the Prairie States Forestry Project in 1935. These programs put local farmers to work planting trees as windbreaks on farms across the Great Plains. The Soil Erosion Service, now called the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) developed and promoted new farming techniques to combat the problem of soil erosion.

Okie Migration

Roughly 2.5 million people left the Dust Bowl states— Texas , New Mexico , Colorado , Nebraska , Kansas and Oklahoma—during the 1930s. It was one of the largest migrations in American history.

Oklahoma alone lost 440,000 people to migration. Many of them, poverty-stricken, traveled west looking for work. From 1935 to 1940, roughly 250,000 Oklahoma migrants moved to California . A third settled in the state’s agriculturally rich San Joaquin Valley.

These Dust Bowl refugees were called “Okies.” Okies faced discrimination, menial labor and pitiable wages upon reaching California. Many of them lived in shantytowns and tents along irrigation ditches. “Okie” soon became a term of disdain used to refer to any poor Dust Bowl migrant, regardless of their state of origin.

Dust Bowl in Arts and Culture

The Dust Bowl, and the suffering endured by those who survived it, captured the hearts and imaginations of the nation’s artists, musicians and writers.

John Steinbeck memorialized the plight of the Okies in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath . Photographer Dorothea Lange documented rural poverty with a series of photographs for FDR’s Farm Securities Administration, and artist Alexandre Hogue achieved renown with his Dust Bowl landscapes.

Folk musician Woody Guthrie , and his semi-autobiographical first album Dust Bowl Ballads of 1940, told stories of economic hardship faced by Okies in California. Guthrie, an Oklahoma native, left his home state with thousands of others looking for work during the Dust Bowl.

FDR and the New Deal Response to an Environmental Catastrophe. Roosevelt Institute . About The Dust Bowl. English Department; University of Illinois . Dust Bowl Migration. University of California at Davis . The Great Okie Migration. Smithsonian American Art Museum . Okie Migrations. Oklahoma Historical Society . What we learned from the Dust Bowl: lessons in science, policy, and adaptation. Population and Environment . The Dust Bowl. Library of Congress . Dust Bowl Ballads: Woody Guthrie. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings . The Dust Bowl. Ken Burns; PBS .

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What Caused the Dust Bowl?

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When pioneers headed west in the late 19th century, many couldn't resist the lure of the tall, grassy land in the semiarid midwestern and southern plains of the United States. They settled there to farm.

They were prosperous in the following decades, but when the 1930s rolled in, so did strong winds, drought and dust clouds that plagued nearly 75 percent of the United States between 1931 and 1939 [source: Library of Congress ]. The era became known as the legendary Dust Bowl .

The Dust Bowl brought ecological, economic and human misery to the U.S. when it was already suffering under the Great Depression . While the economic decline caused by the Great Depression played a role, it was hardly the only guilty party.

Effects of the Dust Bowl

Another dust bowl.

Economic depression coupled with extended drought, unusually high temperatures, poor agricultural practices and the resulting wind erosion all contributed to making the Dust Bowl.

The conditions that led to the Dust Bowl began during the early 1920s. A post-World War I recession led farmers to try new mechanized farming techniques to increase profits. Many bought plows and other farming equipment, and between 1925 and 1930, more than 5 million acres (2 million hectares) of previously unfarmed land was plowed [source: Kershner ]. With the help of mechanized farming, farmers produced record crops during the 1931 season.

However, the overproduction of wheat, coupled with the Great Depression, led to severely reduced market prices. The wheat market was flooded, and people were too poor to buy. Farmers could not earn back their production costs and expanded their fields to make a profit. They replaced the prairie’s native grassland with wheat and left any unused fields bare.

But plow-based farming in this region cultivated an unexpected yield: The loss of fertile topsoil that literally blew away in the winds, leaving the land vulnerable to drought and inhospitable for growing crops.

Then, in a brutal twist of fate, the rains stopped. By 1932, 14 dust storms , known as black blizzards, were reported; in just one year, the number increased to nearly 40.

Millions of people fled the region. The federal government enacted aid programs to help, but it wasn't until 1939, when the rain returned, that relief came.

When the drought hit the Great Plains, roughly one-third of the farmers left their homes and headed to the mild climate of California in search of migrant work. Known as the Okies — the moniker referred to any poor migrant from the Dust Bowl region since only about 20 percent were from Oklahoma — they left behind the parched lands and economic despair.

Many were used to financial stability and home amenities such as indoor plumbing, but had become financially indebted after purchasing mechanized farming equipment and suffering crop failures. They faced foreclosure on home and farm.

California didn't welcome the influx of Okies. Since the number of migrant workers outnumbered the available jobs, tensions grew between Californians and laborers, and public health concerns rose as California's infrastructure became overtaxed.

The New Deal

In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt enacted the first of several mortgage and farming relief acts under the New Deal aimed to reduce foreclosures and keep farms afloat during the drought. But by the end of 1934, roughly 35 million acres (14 million hectares) of farmland were ruined, and the topsoil covering 100 million acres (40 million hectares) had blown away [source: Dyer].

Under the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, the government reserved 140 million acres (57 million hectares) as protected federal lands. Grazing and planting would be monitored to encourage land rehabilitation and conservation.

Additionally, in the early 1930s, the government launched the Civil Conservation Corps (CCC) , one of the most successful New Deal programs. Three million young men volunteered for forestry and conservation work for the CCC. Called Roosevelt's "Forest Army," they planted trees, dug ditches and built reservoirs — work that would contribute to flood control, water conservation and prevent further soil erosion.

Between 1933 and 1935, the government introduced many more programs and agencies to help people affected by the Dust Bowl, including efforts like the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, the Resettlement Administration, the Farm Security Administration, the Land Utilization Program and the Drought Relief Service.

The Works Progress Administration (WPA), a program started under the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act, is one of the best-known New Deal programs. The WPA was a work relief program that employed more than 8.5 million people to build roads, bridges, airports, public parks and buildings.

The Soil Conservation Act of 1935

It took millions of tons of dirt and debris blowing from the Plains all the way into Washington D.C., known as "Black Sunday," to move Congress to pass the Soil Conservation Act and establish the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) under the Department of Agriculture.

The SCS (now the Natural Resources Conservation Service) promoted healthy soil management and farming practices and paid farmers to put such methods to work on their farms. The legacy of the Service's practices, such as irrigation, crop diversity and no-till farming, continue in the Plains today.

The 1930s Dust Bowl didn't inoculate the United States from another such ecological disaster. Over 30 percent of North America is arid or semi-arid land, with about 40 percent of the continental United States (17 Western states) vulnerable to desertification [source: Alexander ].

Sustainable agriculture and soil conservation measures could help avoid another dust bowl, but experts aren't sure that such measures will be enough if extended and severe drought revisits the Great Plains.

No-till Farming

Tilling is a method of turning over the top layer of soil to remove weeds and add fertilizers and pesticides. But tilling also allows carbon dioxide, an important soil nutrient, to escape from the topsoil.

No-till is a sustainable farming method that helps nutrients stay put. Organic matter, such as crop residue, remains at the surface — healthy topsoil is fertile and decreases water runoff and erosion.

Dust Bowl FAQ

How did the dust bowl start, why was the dust bowl important, what were the causes of the dust bowl, how did the dust bowl affect the environment, did living in the dust bowl kill you, lots more information, related articles.

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Dust Bowl , name for both the drought period in the Great Plains that lasted from 1930 to 1936 and the section of the Great Plains of the United States that extended over southeastern Colorado , southwestern Kansas , the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma , and northeastern New Mexico .

The term Dust Bowl was suggested by conditions that struck the region in the early 1930s. The area’s grasslands had supported mostly stock raising until World War I , when millions of acres were put under the plow in order to grow wheat . Following years of overcultivation and generally poor land management in the 1920s, the region—which receives an average rainfall of less than 20 inches (500 mm) in a typical year—suffered a severe drought in the early 1930s that lasted several years. The region’s exposed topsoil, robbed of the anchoring water-retaining roots of its native grasses , was carried off by heavy spring winds . “Black blizzards” of windblown soil blocked out the sun and piled the dirt in drifts. Occasionally the dust storms swept completely across the country to the East Coast. Present-day studies estimate that some 1.2 billion tons (nearly 1.1 billion metric tons) of soil were lost across 100 million acres (about 156,000 square miles [405,000 square km]) of the Great Plains between 1934 and 1935, the drought’s most severe period.

The Great Depression Unemployed men queued outside a soup kitchen opened in Chicago by Al Capone The storefront sign reads 'Free Soup

Thousands of families were forced to leave the Dust Bowl at the height of the Great Depression in the early and mid-1930s. Many of these displaced people (frequently collectively labeled “Okies” regardless of whether they were Oklahomans) undertook the long trek to California . Their plight was characterized in songs such as “Dust Bowl Refugee” and “ Do Re Mi” by folksinger Woody Guthrie , an Oklahoman who had joined the parade of those headed west in search of work. That experience was perhaps most famously depicted in John Steinbeck ’s novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939).

The wind erosion was gradually halted with federal aid. Windbreaks known as shelterbelts—swaths of trees that protect soil and crops from wind—were planted, and much of the grassland was restored. By the early 1940s the area had largely recovered.

The Dust Bowl: The Worst Environmental Disaster in the United States

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Many accidents and natural disasters have done serious environmental damage to the United States. Some of the most famous events include the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, the 2008 coal ash spill in Tennessee, and the Love Canal toxic dump disaster that came to light in the 1970s. But despite their tragic consequences, none of these events come close to being the worst environmental disaster in the United States. That grave title belongs to the 1930s Dust Bowl, created by the drought, erosion, and dust storms (or "black blizzards") of the so-called Dirty Thirties. It was the most damaging and prolonged environmental disaster in American history.

The dust storms started at about the same time that the Great Depression really began to grip the country, and it continued to sweep across the Southern Plains—western Kansas, eastern Colorado, New Mexico, and the panhandle regions of Texas and Oklahoma—until the late 1930s. In some areas, the storms didn't relent until 1940.

Decades later, the land is still not completely restored. Once-thriving farms are still abandoned, and new dangers are again putting the Great Plains in serious jeopardy.

The Dust Bowl Causes and Effects

In the summer of 1931, rain stopped falling and a drought that would last for most of the decade descended on the region.

And how did the Dust Bowl affect farmers? Crops withered and died. Farmers who had plowed under the native prairie grass that held soil in place saw tons of topsoil—which had taken thousands of years to accumulate—rise into the air and blow away in minutes. On the Southern Plains, the sky turned lethal. Livestock went blind and suffocated, their stomachs full of fine sand. Farmers, unable to see through the blowing sand, tied themselves to guide ropes to make the walk from their houses to their barns.

It didn't stop there; the Dust Bowl affected all people. Families wore respiratory masks handed out by Red Cross workers, cleaned their homes each morning with shovels and brooms, and draped wet sheets over doors and windows to help filter out the dust. Still, children and adults inhaled sand, coughed up dirt, and died of a new epidemic called "dust pneumonia."

Frequency and Severity of Storms

The weather got worse long before it got better. In 1932, the weather bureau reported 14 dust storms. In 1933, the number of dust storms climbed to 38, nearly three times as many as the year before.

At its worst, the Dust Bowl covered about 100 million acres in the Southern Plains, an area roughly the size of Pennsylvania. Dust storms also swept across the northern prairies of the United States and Canada, but the damage there couldn't compare to the devastation farther south.

Some of the worst storms blanketed the nation with dust from the Great Plains. A storm in May 1934 deposited 12 million tons of dust in Chicago and dropped layers of fine brown dust on the streets and parks of New York and Washington, D.C. Even ships at sea, 300 miles off the Atlantic coast, were left coated with dust.

Black Sunday

The worst dust storm of all hit on April 14, 1935—a day that became known as "Black Sunday." Tim Egan, a New York Times reporter and best-selling author who wrote a book about the Dust Bowl called "The Worst Hard Time," described that day as one of biblical horror:

"The storm carried twice as much dirt as was dug out of the earth to create the Panama Canal. The canal took seven years to dig; the storm lasted a single afternoon. More than 300,000 tons of Great Plains topsoil was airborne that day."

Disaster Gives Way to Hope

More than a quarter-million people became environmental refugees —they fled the Dust Bowl during the 1930s because they no longer had the reason or courage to stay. Three times that number remained on the land, however, and continued to battle the dust and to search the sky for signs of rain.

In 1936, the people got their first glimmer of hope. Hugh Bennett, an agricultural expert, persuaded Congress to finance a federal program to pay farmers to use new farming techniques that would conserve topsoil and gradually restore the land. By 1937, the Soil Conservation Service had been established, and by the following year, soil loss had been reduced by 65%. Nevertheless, the drought continued until the autumn of 1939, when rains finally returned to the parched and damaged prairie.

In his epilogue to "The Worst Hard Time," Egan writes:

"The high plains never fully recovered from the Dust Bowl. The land came through the 1930s deeply scarred and forever changed, but in places, it healed...After more than 65 years, some of the land is still sterile and drifting. But in the heart of the old Dust Bowl now are three national grasslands run by the Forest Service. The land is green in the spring and burns in the summer, as it did in the past, and antelope come through and graze, wandering among replanted buffalo grass and the old footings of farmsteads long abandoned."

Looking Ahead: Present and Future Dangers

In the 21st century, there are new dangers facing the Southern Plains. Agribusiness is draining the Ogallala Aquifer , the United States' largest source of groundwater, which stretches from South Dakota to Texas and supplies about 30% of the nation's irrigation water. Agribusiness is pumping water from the aquifer eight times faster than rain and other natural forces can refill it.

Between 2013 and 2015, the aquifer lost 10.7 million acre-feet of storage. At that rate, it will be completely dry within a century.

Ironically, the Ogallala Aquifer is not being depleted to feed American families or to support the kind of small farmers who hung on through the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl years. Instead, the agricultural subsidies that began as part of the New Deal to help farm families stay on the land are now being given to corporate farms that are growing crops to be sold overseas. In 2003, U.S. cotton growers received $3 billion in federal subsidies to grow fiber that would ultimately be shipped to China and made into cheap clothing to be sold in American stores.

If the water runs out, there won't be any for the cotton or the inexpensive clothing, and the Great Plains could be the site of yet another environmental disaster.

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The Dust Bowl: Causes, Impact, and Lessons for the Future

This essay is about the Dust Bowl, a severe environmental and agricultural disaster of the 1930s in the Great Plains region. It discusses how a combination of severe drought and poor farming practices led to massive dust storms that devastated the land and forced many families to migrate in search of better living conditions. The essay highlights the socioeconomic impacts, including poverty and displacement, and the federal government’s response, which included soil conservation programs and changes in agricultural practices. It also explores the long-term ecological effects and the lessons learned, emphasizing the importance of sustainable land management and proactive measures to prevent future environmental crises.

How it works

One of the worst ecological disasters in North American history was the Dust Bowl, a 1930s agricultural and environmental catastrophe. The Dust Bowl, which started in the Great Plains, was caused by a combination of a protracted, intense drought and years of intensive farming without sufficient crop rotation, fallow fields, cover crops, or other methods of conserving soil. In addition to changing the physical environment, this time had a significant social impact that still reverberates today, affecting public policy, agricultural practices, and migratory patterns.

A sequence of dust storms that started in 1931, peaked in 1934 and 1936, and persisted intermittently until the end of the decade signaled the start of the Dust Bowl. The agricultural techniques of that era had made the topsoil susceptible, and these dust storms, dubbed “Black Blizzards,” swept it away. Millions of acres of prairie have been tilled by farmers; before, the soil and moisture were retained by the deeply rooted grasses. When the drought hit, the wind could readily carry the loose dirt, resulting in enormous dust clouds that obscured the sky as far east as New York and Washington, D.C.

The impacted areas suffered terrible effects right away. Livestock died, crops failed, and families were left penniless. The Dust Bowl’s economic collapse exacerbated the Great Depression’s problems, resulting in widespread destitution and uprooting. A large number of farmers and their families were compelled to leave their homes in quest of employment and more congenial living arrangements. Hundreds of thousands of “Okies” and “Arkies” moved westward to California and other states during this migration, which is well-known for being detailed in John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath.” Upon arrival, they frequently encountered hard conditions and discrimination.

Aside from the acute suffering of people, the Dust Bowl led to important adjustments in government regulations and agricultural techniques. In response, the federal government, led by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, implemented a number of policies meant to provide both short-term assistance and long-term protection against future calamities. An organized attempt to promote soil conservation methods was started in 1935 with the founding of the Soil Conservation Service, which is now the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Initiatives including contour plowing, crop rotation, and windbreak planting were implemented to lessen soil erosion and replenish the land’s fertility.

Equally important were the Dust Bowl’s ecological effects. Native plants and animals perished as a result of the disruption of local ecosystems caused by topsoil loss and the dust storms that followed. The weather patterns were also impacted by the changing topography, which made the drought conditions worse in some places. Reforestation initiatives and the founding of the Shelterbelt Project—which sought to build a tree barrier across the Great Plains to lessen wind erosion and stabilize the soil—were two of the efforts made to restore the land.

The Dust Bowl left behind more than just its immediate consequences. It was a sobering reminder of the precarious equilibrium that exists between environmental sustainability and human activity. The lessons learnt during this time have impacted agricultural practices globally, highlighting the significance of sustainable farming practices, soil conservation, and the necessity of government action during ecological crises.

The Dust Bowl has reappeared in conversations concerning contemporary farming methods and climate change in recent years. The susceptibility of our food systems to environmental disturbances is becoming more and more evident as global temperatures increase and extreme weather events become more frequent. The Dust Bowl is a lesson in sustainable land management, emphasizing the need for proactive steps to protect our natural resources and the possible repercussions of disregarding such management.

In summary, the Dust Bowl was a disastrous occurrence that altered the social and physical landscape of the US. Its causes highlight the complex interplay between human activity and the environment, stemming from a confluence of natural and human influences. Future generations will benefit greatly from the crisis reaction, which included adjustments to government regulations and agricultural practices. The Dust Bowl serves as a potent reminder of the necessity of alertness, ingenuity, and collaboration in the search of a sustainable future as we confront fresh environmental difficulties.

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Home — Essay Samples — Arts & Culture — Art History — Surviving the Dust Bowl: Resilience and Resourcefulness in the 1930s

Surviving The Dust Bowl: Resilience and Resourcefulness in The 1930s

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Published: Mar 8, 2024

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Environmental and economic factors, resilience and survival.

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The Dust Bowl - Free Essay Examples and Topic Ideas

The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms and environmental damage that occurred in the Great Plains region of the United States during the 1930s. It was caused by a combination of over-farming, drought, and strong winds, which led to the displacement of thousands of people and widespread economic hardship. The Dust Bowl had long-lasting effects on the environment and agriculture in the region, and continues to be recognized as a significant event in American history.

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Causes of the Dust Bowl (Essay/Paper Sample)

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Causes of the Dust Bowl

The dust bowl was a storm that affected the Canadian and American agricultural practices in the 1930’s. It was characterized by strong dust storms which caused a great destruction in the farms hence affecting outcome and worsening the great depression. The drought destroyed plants that held soil together, covered houses with dust as well as suffocating animals. The main cause of this dust bowl was changes in climatic conditions and agricultural practices as discussed below.

During the year 1930, there were great changes in the weather patterns over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The Atlantic Ocean became warmer than normal while the Pacific Ocean became cooler. Therefore, tis change in climate was sufficient enough to change the jet stream’s’ direction. Normally, the air current is known to carry moisture towards the great plains from the Gulf of Mexico and in turn, causes rain on reaching the Rockies. Hence, when the jet stream shifted to the south, rain never reached the great plains resulting to dry soil. Whenever the strong winds blew, they swept away the top soil causing the dust bowl.

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The farmers adopted a new method of farming for the purpose of increasing agricultural produce which involved the use of ploughs to dig the soil. As a result, continued ploughing of larges acres of land led to the weakening of the top layers of the soil making them both unproductive and prone to soil erosion. Also, the ploughing was done occasionally which contributed to weakening of the soil. Whenever the winds blew, the swept large amounts of the top soil hence causing a cloud of dust which went to the extent of covering houses and animals.

Also, the farmers kept large herds of cattle which ended up overgrazing the prairie grass that held the soil. Therefore, the topsoil became loose and vulnerable to the strong winds that blew across the plains. The strong winds swept away the top layers of the soil causing large amounts of dust storms which resulted to the dust bowl era. During the period when the lands were still covered by prairie grass due to less agricultural practices, then the strong winds did not cause any substantial damage to the region.

Concisely, the adverse weather conditions in conjunction with the changed farming practices played a substantial part in causing the dust of bowl. Soil erosion is the main trigger of dust storms as long as the loose soil lies in the path of strong winds. Therefore, measures should be taken in the environment to ensure that the soil remains intact to avoid the occurrence of other dust storms. The prevention of soils erosion can be done in the grass roots by ensuring that there are no adverse agricultural practices such as keeping large herds of cattle and continuous ploughing of the land. The “black Sunday” marked the day when the federal decided to take an action of stopping the dust storm because it had already caused harmful effects to the people who lived in those areas. Houses were covered by dust, animals died and a lot of people developed pneumonia.

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Dust Bowl: Capitalism is the Cause of the Environmental and Economic Disaster

Category: Economics , Environment
Topic: Capitalism , Dust Bowl

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Dust Bowl: Capitalism is the Cause of the Environmental and Economic Disaster

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