Re: Dust Bowl

Posted by MarkB_MI on October 03, 2019 at 18:43:20 from (174.230.13.242):

In Reply to: Dust Bowl posted by John in La on October 03, 2019 at 09:09:13:

The main causes of the dust bowl were the economic conditions combined with the farming practices of the day. During and after the Great War, wheat prices skyrocketed which resulted in a lot of marginal land being put into production. When prices collapsed with the onset of the Depression and much of that land was abandoned. Meanwhile, farming practices of the day didn't comprehend the importance of conserving soil moisture. These practices worked when rain was plentiful, but were disastrous when drought came.

Drought is often blamed for the Dust Bowl, but drought is in fact a normal condition than can be anticipated and planned for. We now know that most of the Great Plains doesn't get enough moisture to reliably produce a crop every year. When I was growing up in eastern Colorado, we would raise a crop of wheat only every other year. Land was "summer fallowed" in the off years, tilled just enough to keep the weeds down and prepare a seed bed. Today, using "no till" chemical (herbicide) fallow, that same land produces two crops in three years. Fallow is followed by wheat, then corn. Yields are much higher, too.

Moldboard plows aren't normally used for dryland farming on the plains, and haven't since Dust Bowl.

I don't think it's fair to say the tree planting efforts were a disaster. There are plenty of trees still standing on the Great Plains that were planted back in the thirties and forties. Most are gone, though, cut down to enlarge fields or allow sprinkler irrigation. I doubt they had much of an effect, but they couldn't have hurt.

The Ogallala Aquifer is being depleted by irrigation at an alarming rate. Sooner or later the irrigation will have to end; even if the government doesn't stop it it will become prohibitively expensive. But what will the small towns of the plains do then? You can't have light industry without a reliable water supply, so the towns will wither and die.

I also recommend Timothy Egan's book. It has a lot of eyewitness accounts of the Dust Bowl.

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