How Did The Dust Bowl Affect The Farmer's Health

The Dust Bowl

There’s a huge cloud coming only it 's not a cloud made of water, it 's a cloud of dust.

When the Great Depression started in the 1930s there was a lot of economic problems, but during this time of crisis the Dust Bowl started. The dust bowl was a huge cloud of dust that destroyed parts of America. When the Dust Bowl hit it destroyed the agriculture and the dust storm affected the farmers living were the Dust Bowl hit and wherever the Dust Bowl hit, the farmer’s health was affected as well.

When the Dust Bowl came it completely destroyed the agriculture due to the severe drought that had come before the actual storm arrived. Some of the farmers managed to actually farm the areas of the drought, but once the storms arrived

Because of the little money the farmers were making many were forced to leave and find work elsewhere. One-fourth of the people who lived in the Dust Bowl left the region. Many of them had skills beyond farming, and when they didn’t find work they suffered extreme poverty.(UXL Encyclopedia of Weather and Natural Disasters. Ed. Amy Hackney Blackwell and Elizabeth Manor.)(p223-225). Once the farmers with other skills did find work they suffered from very low wages for their huge families that some of them had. Like in the book Life During the Dust Bowl on person states that when she was younger she can remember eating string beans and corn almost all the time, also her father did find a job beyond farming but only paid him $24 a month which is to feed himself, her mother and the eight other children.(Yancey)(pg.27). Another way the farmers suffered from the extreme poverty was that the price for the wheat dropped from $1.60 to less than twenty-five cents a bushel.(Yancey)(pg.22). Due to these the farmers had a very rough time getting through the Dust

Not everyone in the Dust bowl area were not farmers but the thing that affected them the most was their health. The reason why the Dust bowl affects their health was because the Dust Bowl is made of, well, dust which means that it gets everywhere. Which in return ment the development of dust pneumonia which is caused when a person gets too much dust in their lungs. One women from the era states that the newspapers would say the deaths of many babies and old people are attributed to breathing in so much dirt.( Living in the Dust Bowl,1934. DISCovering U.S. History.). Also, the ones that stayed and somehow lived through the Dust Bowl they were constantly battered by high speed winds which choked and caused severe suffering for the people. another way the Bowl affected the people’s health was that when the dust came it covered everything from the food they to the clothing they wear. Which made matters worse,no one knew how long the drought would last.(Yancey)(pg.24). Due to these reasons not very many people made it through the Dust