No Dustbowl?

So despite being American and all, I actually don't know the fullest impact of the Dust Bowl. I know the reasons it was made worse, removing the native grasses and deep plough cultivation, etc, but what would be the effects of no Dustbowl in the long term? Or perhaps, what would be the best way to limit the worst of the Dustbowl effects?

This is all brought up because I read where a staggering percentage of Central Plains population moved, many to California yo search for work. It's been dubbed the greatest migration in American history.

So... Yeah, penny for your thoughts, AH hivemind.
 
Hmmm... I do not know the climate causes of the Dust Bowl, but I do know that it contributed significally to the Great Depression for the Americans. It does sound like it did lead to more people in California.

If it did not happen, not sure what changes it would've made besides lessening the Depression.
 
Less migration to California. Those were mostly farmers & agricultural workers looking for familiar jobs. Traditionally since the 1880s the migrants from rural agricultural America were headed to entry level urban industrial jobs. Usually closer to home in the growing western cities. ie: Shoe factories in Tulsa, or food packaging plants in Omaha, or clerical work in Kansas City. The surge of displaced Ag sector labor from the dustbowl were forced out of the state, and were less inclined to seek unfamiliar industrial work, such as there remained.

However in the 1920s the migration from agricultural to industrial labor was accelerating to its peak. That era marked the tipping point between half the population in rural agricultural communities, and half in urban industrial communities. Mechanization of agriculture had made the 19th Century farm model entirely obsolete & there was decreasing opportunity. Two decades later hardly 20% were still involved in viable agricultural pursuits. The balance of the population had either moved to urban areas, or were living in rural poverty but not in the agricultural economy. ie: Applachia. Or small midwestern villages. A residue of that population still was visible during my 1950/60s childhood in Indiana. Families of 2-3 generations with negligible jobs skills still in the small towns living off odd jobs & public assistance. Unwilling to leave 'home' for the booming city factories of 1955 or 1960.

Assuming no Depression, or at least no 'Dust Bowl' the displaced ag labor has less incentive to move to California and moves to cities on the Great Plains.
 
It aggravated the Depression by creating so many refugees. But in terms of the economy, it was a secondary factor. To stop the Dust Bow, you must prevent settlement of western Kansas and the Oklahoma panhandle. Its settlement was encouraged by business interests who were selling the first machines for farms, thrashers, primitive tractors, etc. allow homesteaders to farm more land with fewer animals and less effort. And from the 1890's to the 1920's, rainfall was favorable.
 
Its settlement was encouraged by business interests who were selling the first machines for farms, thrashers, primitive tractors, etc. allow homesteaders to farm more land with fewer animals and less effort.
That gear was made for all Farmers, as those companies had no plan beyond 'Sell more gear than your competitor the next town over to make money'

Farmers did want that gear. Demand was there, so supply would follow
Why beat sheaves of Wheat with flails when machinery makes it easier? A Steam Thresher took days of work to a single afternoon. A tractor could work a full day and not get tired, and a Tractor didn't need to be fed and watered 365 days a year, just when it was working.

Tractors meant you no longer had to have roughly 1/3 of your fields set aside for Fodder for Animals, but for crops to be sold.

Those Farmers were there because the land was cheap, and had a few generations worth of decent rain on that land
 
California becomes a liberal bastion much earlier. Many people forget the Okies where the base and still is the base of the Republican party in California. They only left because they had no choice. It was only with the power of Hispanics in 1990 did California change Dem. So a 1970's blue change perhaps? No Reagan?

Also the American conservation movement does not take off until much later, the ideas that helped it begin where mostly planted in the Dust Bowl. Without that the several national parks and monuments would probably not exist or get delayed by decades.
 

kernals12

Banned
Many people forget the Okies where the base and still is the base of the Republican party in California.
Citation needed. The state leaned Republican before 1930. And there just weren't that many Okies. In 1950, only 3% of Californians were born in Oklahoma
It was only with the power of Hispanics in 1990 did California change Dem
California's move left was much more to do with college educated whites, a product of increasing polarization.
 

Driftless

Donor
IIRC, part of the Dust Bowl was a mix of extended drought, coupled with overplanting, especially of marginal land, lack of crop rotation to help renew soil nutrients. The combination contributed to general damage to the economies of the southern great plains for several years.
 
Some FYI

In the 1920s, Charles John Angell, Sr., better known as Charlie, sought to develop a plow that was particularly suited to the environmental conditions in the windy, semi-arid plains of western Kansas where he lived and farmed. He eventually perfected a new type of implement. It became known as the one-way disc plow because its vertical discs were mounted on the same axle and, therefore, they moved the soil one way. Angell's plow became the first minimum tillage implement to successfully practice the dryland farming technique of stubble mulching.


Traditionally farmers had treated stubble as a nuisance to be rid of by plowing under or burning. Angell, on the other hand, saw a way to use the stubble for the advantage of the dryland farmer. Instead of completely burying the stubble as the standard moldboard and disk plows had done, Angell's one-way, by merely tilling the soil, incorporated the stubble into the upper layer of the topsoil. As a result, the stubble served as a mulch which helped conserve precious moisture and reduced erosion of the soil by wind and water.


00193950.jpg
Angell's one-way disc plow was enthusiastically received by farmers and became the most commonly used tillage implement on the plains from the 1923 patent date through the 1960s. It helped to make Kansas the leading wheat-producing state in the nation and the plains the "bread basket for the world."



On the negative side, however, some historians have listed the one-way plow as a contributing cause of the dust bowl. Because its discs thoroughly pulverized the soil, the ground was more susceptible to blowing.https://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/charles-angell-sr/11967


And

“Drought in the 1930s caused severe wind erosion,” Unger said. “Many families abandoned their farms.”


If there was a silver lining to the dark clouds of the Dust Bowl, it came from interest in conservation tillage practices that would reduce soil losses. Unger said the Hoeme cultivator, similar to the modern chisel plow, and the Noble blade plow, a forerunner of the stubble mulch plow, were developed in the 1930s to help control erosion.


Stubble-mulch tillage began in Nebraska around 1938. “They used blades or sweeps to undercut the surface of the soil to control weeds,” Unger said. “We use similar implements today with much wider sweeps.”


Unger said researchers at Bushland began testing conservation tillage methods using herbicides in the late 1940s and into the 1950s. “Results were not very good because of poor weed control,” he said. Kansas research with improved herbicides in the late 1950s showed more promise.”


Unger said atrazine and 2,4-D brought about renewed interest in reduced tillage system research at Bushland in the late 1960s
.https://www.farmprogress.com/node/260896
DB2570B.JPG
Stubble-Mulch 'Sweep' Plow, that a form of dated back to WWI

It's all about weed control. Native grasses were 'weeds'. Old School Moldboard plows completely buried the weeds, while the Stubble-mulch left most stalks upstanding by cutting the stalk from the root under the soil

the Yields from one-way disk plowing are between those from stubble-mulch tillage and those from moldboard plowing
 
I can remember those 1920s era 'Disks' rusting away in the corners of farm yards and tractor sheds back in the 1960s. Long replaced by much wider and double rowed models. At age four one of my cousins was run over by one and severely cut up. Had some horrendous scars on his torso and legs the rest of his life. Now the farmers drag 16+ meter wide disk cultivators with tractors guided by GPS/autopilots. Some I'm acquainted with raise the windows of the tractor cabin and shoot coyotes scooting through the fields while monitoring the digital control array.
 
Probably the easiest way to avoid the dustbowl in the 30s is to accelerate the spread of irrigation in the region (which is why there has been no repeat of the dustbowl yet - I say yet because at current useage rates, the aquifers will run out and inevitably the region will experience a mega-dustbowl). Probably the best way to avoid the dustbowl is to avoid the immigration of farmers into the region.

And the impacts of either would be far reaching but very subtle.

fasquardon
 
Root cause of the Dustbowl was the Pacific Ocean, believe it or not: it was a half-degree warmer (IIRC), so less rain in the Prairies & Oklahoma--exacerbated by farming where nobody with half a brain had any business farming.:rolleyes:

So really, to avoid it, you need to get rid of the land sellers persuading people to by farms, & have ranching in the Panhandle & Palliser Triangle, instead.

If you do that, you avoid the mass migration of Okies to California, & Steinbeck's book on it, & the movie. You avoid large numbers of farm bankruptcies. Maybe also bank failures as a product.
 
An aggravating issue was the intense need for increased food production during World War 1, so farmers advanced into semi-arid lands like Palliser’s Triangle. Wet weather helped crops during WW1, but lack of rain during the 1930s doomed those farmers.
The bigger picture is explained by climatologists Jared Diamond and Brian Fagan. They talk about decades - sometimes centuries - long wet/dry cycles in Central Asia forcing Mongol Hordes to conquer neighbours or starve.
 
There are better TF2 maps so it wouldn't bother me too much.

All seriousness, wouldn't be much that can be done about the drought. Maybe have dryland farming techniques be put into widespread use to prevent wind erosion. Before this, the farmers had been deep plowing the topsoil which displaced the grasses that kept the topsoil trapped. I think you'd also need to get farmers to find places to cultivate that would have more than 10 inches of rainfall a year. Crop rotation might have been able to help too. Replenish nutrients in the soil and hold the soil in place.
 
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There are better TF2 maps so it wouldn't bother me too much.

All seriousness, wouldn't be much that can be done about the drought. Maybe have dryland farming techniques be put into widespread use to prevent wind erosion. Before this, the farmers had been deep plowing the topsoil which displaced the grasses that kept the topsoil trapped. I think you'd also need to get farmers to find places to cultivate that would have more than 10 inches of rainfall a year. Crop rotation might have been able to help too. Replenish nutrients in the soil and hold the soil in place.
Lessons from the Dust Bowl resulted in many advances in modern agronomy. Too bad the losses had to be so extensive. Western Nebraska (not the southernmost counties) and South Dakota were also over-farmed, but were not blown apart by the dust bowl.
 
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