Dust Bowl Dbq

The Dust Bowl didn’t just appear out of thin air; It has various reasons for its creation. The Dust Bowl’s reasons for why it started were mostly cultivated by a mix of drought and over farming. The eroded soil stirred up in the high winds and smothered the Great Plains. (History.com Staff) Americans had the philosophy of manifest destiny and many made the choice to migrate west. Farmers moving to the Great Plains and over farming accounted for a part in the creation of the dust bowl. The dust bowl also featured black dust storms that formed ominous dark dust and soot clouds. With the wind blowing away the prairie grasses that held the soil down, the eroded ground had no defense to powerful winds. (Seaman) A major reason for the Dust Bowl

A big reason is that In 1909, Congress passed the Homestead Act which offered cheap land and false incentives to attract people to settle. (USA Today) The government played a major role in getting people to come to the dry land. Another reason is the price for wheat increased during World War I as the demand from Europe grew strong. The sudden increase in wheat prices encouraged farmers to plow up a massive amount of land to plant wheat and other row crops. Right when this movement began, the Great Depression hit, making wheat prices drop tremendously. Farmers dug up more land to try to plant even more wheat to keep their income steady. (History.com Staff) When people came to live in the Great Plains, they nearly stripped 100,000,000 acres of land. The prairie turf that had been in the Plains for 35,000 years was destroyed to grow wheat. Hordes of insects and long droughts made farming almost impossible even before the Dust Bowl. The land simply could not take the punishment of all these factors. (USA Today) In summary, the combination of farmers migrating to harsh lands and over farming is a primary reasons for the beginning of the Dust

The Dust Bowl caused a collapse in the economy of food which deflated the food prices. The deflated food prices have still carried over to the modern day. Food historian Dr. Bruce Kraig found similarities in today’s cooking recipes and the recipes used during the Dust Bowl. He noticed that cooking magazines present the same trends of having multiple pasta recipes that target stretching the food dollar. (Muirhead) Some organizations for helping the food economy stemmed from organizations during the Dust Bowl. An example is America's Second Harvest, now known as Feeding America. Feeding America was a product of the original organization of relief efforts during the time of Dust Bowl and Great Depression. This is just one of man other ways the Dust Bowl carried over to the modern day. (Muirhead) A soil conservation district law were set up by the SCS. The law stated that personal districts could be set up by farmers to practice conservation of soil for a period of five years. The New Deal helped get this law established and is an organization still running today. The idea was to recognize new farming methods by the hands of farmers and not government people in Washington. (Teisch) Most people don’t even notice the many effects the Dust Bowl has on us in modern