Progressives normally blame the 1934 drought on farmers, saying that they caused the Dust Bowl.
This is a fascinating theory, given that the 1934 drought covered 70% of the US, the Dust Bowl didn’t start until 1935, and it only covered a small area around the Oklahoma Panhandle.
So other than having everything wrong temporally and spatially, progressives did find yet another way to blame productive people for providing them with an essential commodity.
I don’t WANT to learn how to think like them. Here the dingbat is interviewed by another particularly nasty progressive who’s name I shall not write or speak and tells us what she believes to be the greatest threat to “civilization as we know it.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFiEE09gnzY
This was brought up on Huff and Puff news article about ACC. They say the government fixed it by planting trees. Just FYI. The government fixed it. In case you missed it the first time. /Sarc off
Droughts are common; however, there would have been no “dust bowl” if the prairie had been left in place. Drought (natural) + bad farming practices (human) = Desertification (Dust Bowl)
“It is a misconception that droughts cause desertification.”
pubs.usgs.gov/gip/deserts/desertification/
Thanks for demonstrating the point of my post.
Without plowing, there would not have been a dust bowl.
Without the drought, there would not have been a dust bowl
“It is a misconception that droughts cause desertification.”
pubs.usgs.gov/gip/deserts/desertification/
LOL. Yes. The Sahara wasn’t officially a desert until someone from the USGS proclaimed it was a desert due to XXXX? right? Amazing nonsense. Any more self flagellating nonsense Mr. Misanthrope?
You’re a moron. There are natural deserts, like the Sahara, caused by long-term climate factors. However, man can cause desertification too, by “tillage for agriculture, overgrazing and deforestation.” /wiki/Desertification#Causes
You’re the kind of guy who thinks you should be able to shit in your bed and sleep in it too. Now that’s a true misanthrope.
What else creates a desert besides lack of water??
Please tell…. The point of the post is how severe the drought was compared to recent times… All this bed wetting over the California Drought… People just don’t know anything about Climate History…
Perhaps we need a “climate history month”… To go along with all the others…
Well after reading that usgs piece I think Toppleton has a point… Overgrazing creates desertification… The plants aren’t there to hold water and keep the soil together …
Still the main point of this piece stands…
Correct. People caused the dust bowl via plowing/overgrazing. If the prairie had been in place, it would have tolerated the drought quite well.
Don’t you just hate it when farmers produce food?
It’s not just the prairie. Soil erosion starts every time the ground is plowed.
This whole agriculture thingy …
http://extension.psu.edu/agronomy-guide/cm/sec1/sec11e
Actually, it was the USDA that caused the ‘Dust Bowl’…the ‘best practices’ recommended by the USDA were the worst thing to do in severe drought conditions, but they were still pushed as ‘best’. The USDA iis also to blame for the introduction of the multiflora rose, kudzu among other ‘helpful’ things.
The USDA is STILL pushing the worst thing to do for drought conditions. BIOFUEL especially corn.
‘Droughts are common; however, there would have been no “dust bowl” if the prairie had been left in place.’
Drought was more common before the sod was busted.
http://www.parc.ca/saskadapt/assets/images/AB_droughts_1402-2004.gif
Well they are kinda correct, but not in the way they are actually representing it. The farming practices back then, mostly using multiple cultivations a year, lets most of the moisture in the top bit of soil escape. Ironically, this type of farming is absolutely vital to going all organic. The farming community has gone to low disturbance farming, which is actually using chemicals for weed control, and that keep moisture in the ground and keeps some plant material to help anchor the land.
Many places have experienced droughts as bad as the dirty 30’s since then, they have just been localised. But organic farming practices are starting to show soil drifting again in drier years. If they had all our modern practices available in the 30’s, the soil drifting would not have been as bad, but it still couldn’t have made a crop out of a drought. NO farming practices can overcome a large drought.
One of the practices was to create a ‘dust mulch’…basically pulverize the top fraction of an inch of soil to a fine dust. It was supposed to break the capillary action between the surface and lower parts of the soil. It works…to a point. But the fine dust is one of the first things to blow away when the winds come. And the drier/finer the dust is, the easier to blow away.
And yes, other than the abundant use of chemicals, ‘modern’ farm practices were pretty much in use in the 30’s…or at least starting out. WWII put them on ‘hold’ and they didn’t become very widespread until the 50’s.
Much of the equipment and methods used now were in use in the 1930’s the only real difference is the replacement of animal power with tractors and the size of the equipment.
A bit of farming history:
One question would be how much land was being worked during the 6 million tons compared to the period of 13 million tons of commercial fertilizer. The tractors allowed more acreage to be farmed.
… another way to blame productive people for keeping them alive.
Yeah the Soviets showed how well that worked when they killed off the Ukrainian farmers and then had to buy food from the USA because they had wiped out their knowledge base.