Dust Bowl Essay

Causes of the Dust Bowl

The dust bowl was one of the most challenging moments in history that took place from 1931-1941. During this time, people were suffering and experiencing a myriad of hardships. Even Writer Timothy Egan states in his book that it was “a classic tale of human beings pushing too hard against nature, and nature pushing back,” which is known as the dust bowl. As you can see, some of the causes that provoked the dust bowl were poor farming techniques and drought, leading to severe dust storms called “Black Blizzards,” known as the dust bowl. To begin, one of the contributing factors was dangerous farming methods. Farmers were over-farming, over-plowing, and overgrazing the prairie lands, which demolished most of the grasslands. Eventually, all that was left was bare land that led to erosion of soil vulnerable to the mighty wind. Additionally, farmers shrouded the prairie lands with wheat instead of natural drought-resistant grasses, which resulted in substantial environmental deterioration.

In fact, there were nine years of below-average rainfall resulting in droughts. As a consequence of the drought, it caused the land to be arid and created a water shortage that led to crops dying. This is an impeccable condition for Dust Bowl as the wind blew across the plains to pick up the dirt forming massive swirling dust storms. To sum up, the dust bowl was provoked by both humans and nature combined, poor farming techniques and droughts. If people had not over-plowed and over-grazed the prairie plains, maybe the dust bowl might not have taken place. As you can see, the dust bowl occurred due to the adverse impact of over-farming methods on the environment combined with mother nature