Download The Dust Bowl: action and reaction between

The Dust Bowl: action and reaction
between ecosystem and economy
Alejandro Vidal Crespo
Service Director, Market Strategies
MONTHLY STRATEGY REPORT
November 2014
Monthly Strategy Report. November 2014
The Dust Bowl: action and reaction
between ecosystem and economy
“In light of increasing concerns about environmental issues, we put into historical perspective
the colonisation of America’s Great Plains, when crops replaced native vegetation, and a
period of drought – compounded by the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 – triggered
human displacement and massive dust storms. The government took the helm to mitigate
the effects on the population and the rains returned, but major changes occurred along the
way…”
In the second half of the nineteenth century, Americans migrated en masse to the country’s vast
central plains. Waves of settlers uprooted from the east coast to the country´s heartland, where the
government offered land grants in exchange for five years of continuous residence on the property,
cultivating the land and building a house on it.
The territory was originally inhabited by Native Americans, who – in the best scenarios – agreed to
“transfer” the land to the settlers. Often, clashes ensued between the authorities and the indigenous
population, resulting in outright wars and the destruction of their livelihood. For example, of the vast
herds of bison that roamed the prairies, an estimated 25 million were slaughtered in 1872-1873.
Subsequently, in the decades to follow, the appearance of the Great Plains changed dramatically. A
wild, drought-resistant ecosystem teeming with native flora and millions of large animals that tilled
the soil beneath their feet became vast farmlands, particularly after the introduction of steel ploughs,
a more efficient alternative than iron on this type of terrain.
Farmers focused on cultivating wheat, a crop that was less-drought resistant with lower soil retention
than the region’s native grasses.
Nevertheless, in the early 1930s, a cold front
from the tropical region of the eastern Pacific
(known as La Niña) combined with abnormally
high temperatures in the North Atlantic,
triggered a period of prolonged drought (19301938) in the Great Plains of North America.
Large wheat plantations yielded little or
no crops. Degraded topsoil, coupled with
desiccation and the effects of mechanised
farming techniques, stripped the superficial
layers of organic nutrients, and left the soil
exposed to wind erosion. An estimated annual 369 million net tonnes of dust was lifted into the
atmosphere, creating terrible dust storms over 400,000 km2 in scale (twice the size of Great Britain),
that swept through the central and south-western states of Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas,
on its way to the Atlantic.
For the population, the ramifications could not have come at a worse time. The onset of the drought
and the subsequent Dust Bowl phenomenon coincided with the outbreak of the Great Depression in
the United States, in October of 1929. Crop failures, followed by unbearable dust storms that buried
farms, were compounded by unemployment rates that reached 25% at the height of the Depression,
a crisis exacerbated by the Dust Bowl. It is important to note that in the years preceding the Great
Monthly Strategy Report. November 2014
Depression, crops were bountiful and farmers enjoyed several seasons of high yields, the profits of
which were often consigned to financial investments and bank deposits that disappeared over night.
The combination of both phenomena resulted
in a mass exodus from the central states. More
than three million people abandoned their farms
and headed to cities, where the situation was not
much better and their arrival only exacerbated
supply problems by reducing the ratio of food
producers to consumers.
The phenomenon also coincided with a shift in the
economic focus of the United States implemented
by President Roosevelt, known as the New Deal.
One of its programmes, the Soil Erosion Service,
promoted improved farming practices such as legume planting and the creation of pasturelands on
which to rear livestock, whose prices were in turn subsidised by another government body to ensure
the supply of quality meat products to cities.
Millions of heads of livestock that could not be maintained by farmers were purchased by the
government at above-market rates and, in many cases, slaughtered in order to stabilise falling prices
as demand plummeted due to the crisis and the poor quality of meat products derived from animals
living in substandard conditions. The restoration of market conditions meant salvation for many small
farming communities, saving jobs and securing the rural population.
Under the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936, more than 200 million trees were
planted from Canada to Texas, which not only alleviated the problem of soil erosion, but created jobs
for many unemployed labourers in the United States. Millions of acres of farmland transferred into
government custody and were subsequently allocated to other uses in an effort to reduce the effects
of soil degradation.
The return of the rains, together with measures designed to mitigate erosion helped alleviate the
problem in the years that followed. Nevertheless, the impact of the sudden changes to the ecosystem
and the mass elimination of native species in favour of more productive but less resilient crops caused
a natural disaster with mammoth implications for the human population, as well as for the economy
and the supply of basic resources in the medium term.