The question of why the Dust Bowl happened is not merely an academic one. Far from it. Personally, I regard the Dust Bowl of 1930s America as one of the six worst ecological disasters of all time. Even if one doesn’t go quite as far as I do, no one denies it was a human and environmental catastrophe. Therefore, understanding why the Dust Bowl happened is well worth our time.

On the surface, the answer might seem very straightforward. The reason why the Dust Bowl happened is because the 1930s were hot, windy, and dry on the Great Plains. This is all true. But the weather has been hot, windy, and dry on the Great Plains for years at a time in other decades, too. The 1890s fit that description in some respects. That decade had some dust storms. But why is the 1930s THE Dust Bowl? Any event important enough to get its own name requires greater explanation.

Why the Dust Bowl Happened – the Origins

Most historians trace the reasons why the Dust Bowl happened toWorld War 1. How could war, in Europe, no less, cause dust storms in America?

Our explanation begins with market economics. When nations go to war, they want their armies to have high morale. One thing that helps soldiers have high morale is an adequate supply of food. But, at least in Europe, World War 1 disrupted agriculture badly. Grain belts like the plains of Eastern Europe became battlegrounds.

Enter the United States. The Great Plains seemed a paradise for growing wheat. New innovations in farm equipment increased the amount of wheat a farmer could cultivate. Europeans needed food, and America had the answer. The US government implored farmers to grow more wheat, especially after the US joined the fighting in 1917. Wheat will win the war! That’s what Uncle Sam told Great Plains farmers.

The farmers responded. Another truism of market economics is that when demand for a product gets ahead of supply, prices rise. During the war wheat prices soared. Farmers made money. Some invested that money in more machinery or in acquiring more land.

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A motorist attempts to outrun a dust storm in Texas in 1936.

What Went Wrong, Then?

This seems like a perfect endorsement of capitalism and the American Way so far. Why did things turn sour?

One is, of course, that Europeans did not stay at war forever. World War 1 ended in November of 1918. During the next couple years, the farmland torn up by the war slowly began to produce once more. European demand for American wheat dropped significantly as a result. Now, supply was ahead of demand. That usually means falling prices. What wasn’t falling, however, was the amount of debt farmers had taken on to buy more machinery and land during the flush times of the war. Suddenly, hard times loomed for American farmers. By 1922 or so, hard times had arrived for many people on the Great Plains.

But that wasn’t all. By themselves, impoverished farmers were not why the Dust Bowl happened.

Another thing had happened during World War 1. Again, market economics supplies the explanation. When wheat prices soared, suddenly, it became profitable for farmers to farm and plant marginal land. The High Plains of Wyoming, Colorado, the western Dakotas, eastern Montana, and so forth, were now economically profitable to plow. Land that wouldn’t produce a profit during normal times would produce a profit when wheat prices skyrocketed. And besides, wasn’t the US government telling farmers to plant more? They were making money and being patriotic at the same time.

It appeared a complete verification of the greatness of the American Way.

The Great Plow-Up

This conscious decision to plow the marginal areas of the High Plains is known to historians as the Great Plow-Up. The problem was this. The marginal land plowed during World War 1 mainly consisted of sod and Great Plains grasses that combined to hold the soil in place. When the war was over, prices dropped, and farmers stopped planting this marginal land, guess what? The soil was now loose and had nothing to hold it in place. The stage was set for the Dust Bowl. All that remained was for the Great Plains to hit a drought that also featured high winds.

By the mid-1930s this is what farmers got. Scorching heat combined with little rain and high winds to create dust storms of a consistency and magnitude almost unimaginable. The American Way that had seemed so perfect in 1919 now seemed a complete failure. The states of the Great Plains have been losing population relative to the rest of the US ever since.

Finishing Why the Dust Bowl Happened

Although I’m sure some readers will choose to think so, this blog post isn’t truly meant to convince readers that capitalism is awful. It is, however, meant as a reminder that capitalism does produce market failures at times. The Dust Bowl was an incredibly severe market failure, and it was a failure produced by capitalism working precisely the way it was designed to.

The Great Plains have never recovered fully in some ways. While farming continues on the Great Plains, it is unsustainable as practiced at present. Modern agriculture relies on massive inputs of fertilizer, building chemicals in the soil. Great Plains agriculture also relies on the unsustainable depletion of the Oglala Aquafer and other water sources. Even with these unsustainable practices, many farmers also receive subsidies from the US government. (And then some raise hell when the government creates programs to assist other groups.)

I hope the reader has gained valuable knowledge from this look at why the Dust Bowl happened. If you enjoyed the content, please consider signing up for regular updates from my blog by scrolling down a little father.

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