HS103 blog entry 12 (Response to 'Ecology')

The Dust Bowl Years

In the 1930s, a devastating ecological disaster took place in the regions of Colorado, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. It had a huge area of effect and the decade during which it took place was termed ‘The Dust Bowl’. Clouds of dust blotted out the skyline as they rolled over the land. Visibility was reduced to a bare minimum and the air became unhealthy to breathe in.

Soil erosion had occurred on a massive scale by a combination of man-made factors and a series of consecutive droughts over the ten-year period. The dust that was rolling over the plains was actually eroded topsoil, leaving the region barren and infertile. Popularly accepted man-made factors included over-farming that depleted the soil’s nutrients and destroyed grasses which held the soil together, as well as the introduction of harvesting technology that was more efficient in gathering but damaged the soil. (NDMC on the Dust Bowl Years, 2006). The disaster precipitated because of a series of droughts that left the soil dry and dusty, eventually blown away by winds.

The main socioeconomic cause was likely a drop in crop prices which influenced farmers to farm more extensively and intensively, as well as abandoning soil preservation processes such as the resting of the land, planting of windbreaks, and care for beneficial soil organisms. The 1929 Great Depression caused financial strain on farmers who had, in prior years, purchased more capital in a bid to expand their operations. Furthermore, bumper wheat crops increased overall supply in the market and pushed down prices as recession caused a drop in demand (NDMC, 2006).

Socioeconomic effects include farmers who had to sell their farms because they were unable to pay off loans made to finance their asset purchases, as well as the mass migration of residents of the uninhabitable area to the surrounding regions.

Scientific rationality and capitalism are two practices that are carried along in the current of globalization, and I feel that the above example illustrates the kind of negative impacts they can have on people and the environment.

The reduction of the relationship between the land and farming to that of a mechanical equation has encouraged over farming and poor care of land. The discovery of the key roles of Nitrogen, Phosphorous, and Potassium (N-P-K) in the nutrition of plants, and the subsequent development of synthesized fertilizers has led to theories that suggest that the relationship between land and farming is as simple as: Input chemical nutrients to produce more food. (Pollan, 2006:146) It has also given farmers the option of farming their land without rest by pouring in more chemical fertilizers to increase growth of plants, and the 1930s episode shows that they will exercise that choice in dire situations.

In his book, the Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan studies methods of sustainable farming (Pollan, 2006:130). His study suggests that farms that diversify their livestock and crops can provide abundant produce on a level equal to those of conventional, monoculture farms, without any harm to the environment. This is achieved through processes of crop rotation and animal rotation, and the giving of special attention to cultivation of pasture and the production of natural fertilizers from animal waste. He suggests that this counter-cultural trend is growing in the States, but he also highlights some of the obstacles that prevent more farms from diversifying their produce in this way. Firstly, distributing companies find it economically unsound to deal with transporting and storing many different types of crops from one particular farm; they would rather follow the principle of economies of scale and buy large amounts of a single crop from one farm. Secondly, government subsidies encourage farmers to keep producing corn as part of their agenda to keep food prices down (why this is bears further investigation); farmers receive money from both buyers and the government for the corn that they produce (Pollan, 2006:53).

However, the continued oversupply continues to drive down the price of corn in the market, and for farmers to continue to maintain their standard of living and pay fees, their only option is to produce more corn, which eventually drives prices down more. The result is that agribusiness companies continually research ways to goad consumers into eating more corn (various forms such as corn syrup in drinks and corn in cereal), in spite of the fact that naturally, the demand for food is generally inelastic (there SHOULD be a limit to how much each person can eat, though companies work tirelessly to distort this limit through advertising and product design). Chemical fertilizer manufacturers profit from this cycle of over-stimulated production and artificial demand creation as well, because farmers pay out for more fertilizers to stimulate production.

The historical shift from subsistence to commercial farming, as well as the proliferation of efficiency-oriented technologies, has culminated in episodes of behavior by farmers that can be characterized as desperate and sometimes hysterical. The agricultural system is tied to a profit-oriented, capitalist system that does its best to distort the reality that food consumption is not elastic, and encourages monoculture farming for a number of reasons. Ultimately, I feel that the US government should shoulder a greater part of the blame in today’s context, as its agenda to subsidize food prices and keep them low is what artificially stimulates supply and, in the long run, withholds from farmers what is due to them for their labors.











Reference list

Michael Pollan. (2006). The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Chapter 2: ‘The Farm’. Penguin Books.

Michael Pollan. (2006). The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Chapter 8: ‘All Flesh Is Grass’. Penguin Books.

Michael Pollan. (2006). The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Chapter 9: ‘Big Organic’. Penguin Books.

National Drought Mitigation Center. (2006). NDMC on ‘Drought in the Dust Bowl’. Taken from http://www.drought.unl.edu/whatis/dustbowl.htm. Retrieved on 2 November, 2008.