How Did The Dust Bowl Affect The World

The Dust Bowl consisted of a series of perfidious storms that occurred in the 1930's, the Dust Bowl affected everyone in the United States, mainly people in the Midwestern states. (The Dust Bowl even affected the world.) The Dust Bowl affected many things, such as the economy, farming, and of course the people of the United States. However, after the Dust Bowl came to an end, it taught us new methods of farming and give us new technology. But more importantly, it taught us ”what not to do.” John Steinbeck wrote in his 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west - from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico; from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out. Carloads, caravans, homeless

Farming interested many people because it gave the opportunity for people who were searching for work to find a job. The crop that was yielding the most around the country was wheat. The world needed wheat and the United States could provide it easily. In the beginning of the 1930's, it was a dry season, but most farmers went ahead and started producing wheat crops. In 1931 everyone started farming wheat. With the increase in wheat production, wheat crop prices drop down from sixty-eight cents a bushel in July 1930, to twenty-five cents a bushel in July 1931. With many farmers over producing their crops, a majority of farmers went broke and abandoned their fields. For the farmers that stayed, the tried everything to keep their crops from going under. Farmers then started over producing their crops so much that they started robbing the earth’s soil from its nutrition. Also, farmers would not rotate their crops. This would dry the soil to a fine dust. These were the first mistakes that farmers made, and ones that eventually lead to the Dust

In late January 1933, the region was wretched by a horrible dirt storm, which destroyed almost all the wheat. In early February, the thermometer dropped seventy-four degrees in eighteen hours to a record low at Boise City. Before the year had ended, locals counted over 130 dirty days in 1933. Although the dirt storms were fewer in 1934, they bought attention from all over the world. In May, a severe storm blew dirt from Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas as Far East as New York City and Washington D.C. the year 1934 was better in the since that there were not as many dust storms. However, the year was extremely hot, new records were reached and over 100 people had died from the heat. In 1935, The Dust Bowl made the national headlines again. The storm caused a terrific amount of damage. Dust walls rolled up two miles high, stretched out a hundred miles and moved faster than 50 miles an hour. These storms destroyed huge areas. The people tried to “storm proof’ their houses as much as possible. Every crack that could be plug was plug with sheets, blankets, or anything else that they could find. A lot of these houses that were so tightly shut up that they had no air circulation, the houses became extremely hot and