Both the Cause and Solution

In the 1930s the Great Plains experienced one of the worst ecological disasters in American history: The Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms and prolonged drought that was exacerbated by a mass migration of farmers who were encouraged to over-till and deep plow their fields. This ecological disaster can be largely attributed to U.S. government policies coupled with misinformation that encouraged farmers to venture west and cultivate the plains using ineffective dryland farming techniques. While the U.S government greatly contributed to the Dust Bowl’s onset, the government was also ultimately the one able to help save many of the farmers from poverty and starvation. When FDR became president he enacted many New Deal policies and created agencies such as the Soil Conservation Service that helped bring farmers out of poverty and restore their land. With the help from soil scientists such as Hugh Hammond Bennet and Henry Howard Finnell, the U.S. government began slowly restoring the soil and earth that it had unintentionally aided in the destruction of.

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