![]() ![]() In the drought area people are not afraid to use new methods to meet changes in Nature, and to correct mistakes of the past. A farmer and his sons caught in a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936. NPx 66-174(32) Fireside Chat Reading Copy,, September 6, 1936. I saw brown pastures which would not keep a cow on fifty acres. I shall never forget field after field of corn stunted, earless and stripped of leaves, for what the sun left the grasshoppers took. I shall never forget the fields of wheat so blasted by heat that they cannot be harvested. I talked with families who had lost their wheat crop, lost their corn crop, lost their livestock, lost the water in their well, lost their garden and come through to the end of the summer without one dollar of cash resources, facing a winter without feed or food-facing a planting season without seed to put in the ground. I saw drought devastation in nine states. In his fireside chat of September 6, 1936, FDR said this about the drought: The Shelterbelt Project remains one of the great environmental success stories of our time. This immense windbreak moderated the Dust Bowl’s destructive winds. Roosevelt’s Shelterbelt Project, created by executive order, fought wind erosion by marshalling farmers, Civilian Conservation Corps boys, and Works Progress Administration workers in an enormous effort to plant over 200 million trees in a belt running from Bismarck, North Dakota, to Amarillo, Texas. The Taylor Grazing Act regulated grazing on overused public ranges. The Soil Conservation Service helped farmers enrich their soil and stem erosion. The Farm Security Administration provided emergency relief, promoted soil conservation, resettled farmers on more productive land, and aided migrant farm workers who had been forced off their land. Close-up of the harsh soil conditions caused by unchecked erosion. NPx 74-20(263)įDR’s New Deal attacked the crisis on the Great Plains on a number of fronts. His actions could be considered a blueprint for how a government should respond to an environmental disaster-combining scientific research, community engagement, business incentives, and proven environmental policies including soil and water conservation programs. When Franklin Roosevelt became President in 1933, he faced many challenges but saving America’s farms was one of his most important and difficult tasks. Iconic shot of a destitute pea picker and her children. NPx 65-593(65) In the hardest hit area-covering parts of Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, and the Texas Panhandle-hundreds of thousands of people abandoned the land. Once fertile farmlands became barren and dusty wastelands where nothing would grow. The winds that sweep across the plains began carrying off its dry, depleted topsoil in enormous “dust storms.” Dramatic and frightening, these storms turned day into night as they destroyed farms. A long drought in the early and mid-1930s triggered disaster. It unfolded on the nation’s Great Plains, where decades of intensive farming and inattention to soil conservation had left the vast region ecologically vulnerable. ![]() The Dust Bowl was a man-made environmental disaster. ![]()
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