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Agriculture during great depression
Agriculture during great depression
The effects opf the great depression on farming
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When the stock market crashed many were unable to pay their debts not only to their stock purchases but also to their banks. Without payments to the loans given out, banks began to fail. Additionally, the gap between upper and lower classes greatly widened, which only increased the economic issues. On top of everything occurring, a drought developed in the Great Plains that created the “Dust Bowl” and destroyed the agriculture business. The sources of downfall in the Great Depression can be traced to the stock market failure, bank failure, farm failure, and job market failure.
The three main causes of the Dust Bowl was Drought, amount of land being harvested on, and death of the shortgrass prairie. All of these reasons have to tie in with soil and water. The Dust Bowl was truly the Worst Hard Time in American history. It affected the great plains of america forever and would go down in
Farmers of the late 19th century faced several struggles as they attempted to feed themselves and a growing nation. Though they were undeniably crucial to the country, the country often abandoned them to fend against their problems themselves. These desertments lead to the creation of several movements, such as The Grange, and of political parties such as the Populists. The challenges of American farmers were often intertwined and difficult to get to one cause of the problem. Increasing railroad use and inflated prices hurt the farmers tremendously, which then lead to widespread debt and the cry for silver to be used in the money standard, which then resulted in overproduction of goods to try to overcompensate for the burgeoning debt, but only made it worse.
Farm technology made a lot of progress from 1890-1920. Before this time, all the farming was done by hand. There were many inventions from wire to tractors to help make farming easier. Three inventions that really changed farming were gas tractors, cream separator and horse drawn combine. Gas tractors were created so that you didn’t have to use your horses so much and so you could pull more.
Some supporting evidence is found in document C&D for example, *Tractors, plows and combines could do the work of ten horses (Doc C).Between 1899 and 1929 the number of acres harvested in the plains doubled (Doc D).The farm of Fed Folkers is a good example (Doc D).This new machinery caused the shortgrass prairie to be plowed up even faster. Modern machinery had made wheat farming more efficient and profitable. The result was more land speculation, more acreage turned over to wheat farming, and a blind faith that the good times wouldn't end. But warning signs were
Instead of having a positive effect, this practice damaged the land by leaving the dry, unfruitful soil at the surface. Although it had been happening for a while, harmful farming techniques began having a larger effect when done in such a large scale. “Dust Bowl During the Great Depression” tells about the harmful farming techniques that caused the Dust Bowl. The farmers were removing grass that benefited crops that could endure harsh weather and keep crops fixed in the ground. This method revealed the topsoil, leaving it vulnerable to violent winds.
In the article The Balance, “The farmers could not profit of the little crops that they had due to deflation.” Since they could not profit off their crops they had a very hard time living there lives. There kids sometimes had to drop out of school because their parents could not afford to hire help. This made children lose out on learning time, causing them to have lost a lot of valuable knowledge. On the web page US History, the article about Farmers Lives In The 1930’s, says, “More than one out of five farmers was on financial aid, because they could not make any money by selling their crops.”
The farmers felt that they were paying more and more to take loans and borrow money, to buy farming necessities and to sell their crops. The prices that had for the crops was degrading dramatically.
Many suffered from breathing in the dust and were sent to local hospitals for a condition called “dust pneumonia” (Tarshis 9). The dust invaded houses and almost every area of the settler’s lives. It was impossible to escape the dust. The dust seemed to choke the life out of everything in its path.
It turned the air of the Great Plains to solid dirt. As time went on more and more severe dust storms began. They caused many epidemics within the United States. A primary epidemic was pneumonia. The dust that filled the air caused many people’s lungs to fill up with dirt.
Most farmers struggled to make a living due to key issues. There was often a high tax on railroads which had cut a large profit from the farmers. The farmers had no other option other than the railroad since the farmers were often very far off westward in the Great Plains, while the market with a large population was still in eastern cities like New York. Likewise farmers had to pay a middle man in the East to sell their commodities in the East, because the poor farmers were unable to travel all the way to the East to sell their products then come back to start farming for the next year. Surprisingly, farmers were often detrimental to themselves due to
What other events combined with the economic crash to make the Depression so harsh? Urban centers had turned into uninhabited areas. Grim shantytowns, bitterly dubbed "Hoovervilles," were made from crates and cartons. Meanwhile, a drought withered crops and made the Great Plains into badlands.
In a very bad way. The dust bowl was very hard for the people living in it. They could do nothing because it was very hard to go outside and have something to do. It was even harder to get away from the dust because it could get through the cracks in your
Nature’s delicate balance of wind, rain, and grass had been disturbed by human settlement. Fifty years earlier, a strong protective carpet of grass had covered the Great Plains. The grass held moisture in the soil and kept the soil from blowing away (Holley).” Before the Great Plains were settled, its geography was covered in lush grasses that made it perfect for farming and raising livestock. As the population grew and more and more people settled there, the grass was removed so that they could farm the land.
Eroding soil led to massive dust storms and economic devastation, especially in the Southern Plains. When the drought killed off the crops, high winds blew the remaining topsoil away. Parts of the Midwest has still not recovered even almost 80 years later! " When winds blew, they raised enormous clouds of dust. It deposited mounds of dirt on
