The Dust Bowl – Insights from A Massive Ecological Disaster

Posted On 11 July 2023

Last updated on April 5th, 2024

The other evening, I watched Ken Burns’ documentary The Dust Bowl. I have found all his films excellent! He has an amazing ability to make what could be a boring topic interesting. There are some lessons that we can learn from the dust bowl.

For those of you who are not familiar with the dust bowl, it was during the 1930’s in the Midwest. The Oklahoma panhandle was the center of the dust bowl. Due to a lot of the grassland being turned into farmland, and drought years back-to-back, there were massive dust storms that assaulted the area.

There was also the economic depression that affected the whole country at the same time. The dust bowl has been claimed to be the largest ecological disaster in the United States. So, what can we learn from this tragedy?

Nature always wins.

Seasons come and go. There are cycles that happen whether we like them, want them, or agree with them. The environment is constantly changing. We are the ones that need to learn to adapt to nature, we cannot change nature.

The semi-arid land of the Midwest has different requirements for farming than areas that receive adequate rain. Due to the wheat shortage, farmers started flocking into the area to grow wheat. The first several years there was enough rain that the wheat grew very well.

During the dust bowl years, it seemed as though the land was trying to exterminate the people there. 90 years later, there are towns, cities, and farms still in the area. When people learned how to adapt to nature, life and work became sustainable. Also, we cannot change the environment – we can merely adapt to it.

Promoters can make up facts.

The land promoters and speculators in the Midwest were only interested in selling the land and making a profit. They would say anything to convince people to buy! One statement that stuck in my head was that it was the tilled soil that attracted the better climate in the region.

Many of the fraudulent promoters (we’d call them scammers) ended up in prison. By the way, the west was full of these “snake oil salesmen”! Fortunately for us, the government has passed laws that restrict unscrupulous marketing. Still, we need to be a bit skeptical if something sounds too good.

For better clarity, I have learned to ask two qualifying questions when I hear something:

Who said it?

Why did they say it?

If the person telling you stands to gain personally from what they are telling you, proceed with caution. And yes, they can profit from something that is good for you. Just be aware.

Easy money does not continue long term.

As I mentioned, the first several years were excellent for farming. One of the farmers hoped that he could give a section (640 acres) of farmland to each of his five sons! (He ended up losing his house and land in foreclosure a few years later.)

We should take advantage of good times. At the same time, we need to remember that things will not always be that way. During good times, or easy money, we should take the opportunity to look for ways we can improve.

Sustainability should be our goal.

We need to ask ourselves if we can keep doing what we are doing long term. If the answer is no, we must change what we are doing. It could be a small change, or it could require doing something completely different.

Another way we can look at this is by asking ourselves if what we are doing today is part of our long-term plan. And then we need to ask if it will have a positive or negative impact long term.

Don’t become a “Suitcase Farmer”.

There were city slickers that got off the train with a suitcase in their hand. They were there to make their fortune farming! Little did they know that they were walking into what would become known as the dust bowl.

Deciding to do something because everybody else is making money doing that is a terrible decision. Instead of becoming wheat farmers, they may have done better by going into a business that uses wheat – say a bakery or brewery. (Due to too much wheat on the market, the price collapsed!)

Life is always teaching us lessons. Beware when things come easy – the lessons often come later and are usually more painful.

More is not always the answer.

More was the mantra of the wheat farmers. If crops were good and prices were up, they thought they should plant more wheat. If the prices dropped, they should plant more wheat to make up the difference. This sounds like what we hear today in a lot of businesses.

Companies want sales to increase every year. Every year should be a boom year! Growth is a normal part of life. We should strive to grow and stretch and learn. The fact is that some years are better than other years. Smart people plan for the lean years during the fat years.

Less can be the way to progress at times. I previously wrote about getting rid of excess in our lives.

Over-expanding & debt can work against you.

Borrowing in order to expand is regular business practice. The problem comes when people over expand. Trouble starts when business plans depend on the good times continuing, artificially low interest rates, and easy credit.

We are seeing this play out in the commercial real estate right now. There are things we can do so we don’t overextend ourselves. Instead of just taking a lender’s word for how much house we can qualify for, why don’t we pull up an online mortgage calculator? Jack the interest rate right up to 10%. If you don’t think interest rates like that are possible, look at what the mortgage rates were in 1980. They were even higher! If you are good with payments at that rate, anything less is a bonus. (Still, try to get the lowest interest rate you can.)

Storms have a beginning and an end.

During the dust bowl, the storms become stronger and more frequent. The important thing to remember is that storms do come to an end. It may seem like an eternity while the winds are howling away outside. The storms do come to an end.

The storms in our lives come to an end as well. We need to be prepared for them because they will come our way. It could start as a “sunny day”, then the dark clouds can quickly roll in and completely change your day.

When things are not working, we need to change our methods.

There is still wheat farming in the area where the dust bowl happened, although it is not done the same way. An agricultural expert was brought in to assess what was happening. The first thing he suggested farmers do is called contour planting – where the rows are planted with the lay of the land.

Other changes that were made to government land use policy corrected some of the problems that led to the dust bowl. A big change was that some of the land was reverted back to grassland to hold moisture in the ground and prevent erosion. Trees were planted to help block the wind. Farmers started to irrigate their crops when there was not enough rain.

In our lives, sometimes we need to bring in some expert help. This can be a person we can sit down with and talk over our situation. Sometimes, it can be a book or a blog post. When things are not going right in our lives, we need to ask why. Then, we need to take responsibility for the problems and start fixing them. It will take time, yet things can be turned around.

Boondoggle vs. Lifeline: Depends on perspective.

Many considered the Public Works Administration (PWA) to be nothing more than just a boondoggle. They said it was just a “make work project”. And those people were right – to a degree.

The dust bowl and the depression were devastating to many. Mothers made their kids clothes out of cloth flour sacks. To the people who were broke (and broken emotionally), the PWA projects were a lifeline!

When a person is able to earn money, they have their dignity and self-respect. It provided a way that they could support their families again. These projects also added to the nation’s infrastructure, so the money was not just wasted.

People can endure a lot.

The dust bowl led to one of the largest migrations in US history. Although not everybody left the dust bowl area. It had become their home.

Everybody in the dust bowl area suffered. Some more than others. Shopkeepers gave farmers credit to help them get to the next year, only the next year wasn’t better. Farmers lost their farms and their homes. Shopkeepers had to close their stores because they were owed too much from too many. In Boise City, OK, a quarter of the children were 10% underweight. As the years passed, people started to get what was called “Dust Pneumonia”, and many died from the condition.

When we are presented with hard times we can endure more than we think we can. Sometimes the only thing that keeps people going is the hope that next year will be better.

People go broke slowly.

Crop failure is not what a farmer wants. The reason so many farmers were foreclosed on was because the extreme drought and the dust storms continued for so many years.

When a recession comes along people don’t go broke right away. It takes time. We use up what savings we have. Our credit can be used to kick the can down the road. The crisis comes when our resources run out.

It can be easy to hear about a recession yet look around and everything looks pretty normal. The deception is that we have no way of knowing who’s paying their credit card off still – and who isn’t able to. Who’s skipping meals? Who’s cutting back on their spending? It can take years for the effects to be seen.

No one knows what the future holds in store.

Most of the farmers in the dust bowl were “Next Year People”. Next year it will be better! Next year we will get caught up. The problem is that it was the better part of a decade that the disaster lasted. 1930’s harvest was a bumper crop. People in the area said that the depression wouldn’t affect them – it was a problem for those “back east”.

The news has experts talking about what is going to happen. All that they can do is guess! Yes, they can look at history. Has something like this happened before? They can sound very confident. The reality is that no one knows what the future holds in store.

Like paying attention to the changing of the seasons, or seeing clouds building in the sky, we need to pay attention to what is happening around us. We also need to be prepared for storms that will come our way.

I encourage you to prepare for the worst yet hope for the best. When we use the 1-Up System to have a full pantry, we have an emergency fund, and carrying cash, we have a sense of confidence that we can handle what comes our way.