Dust Bowl on PBS

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Downtown Bang!

Member
Ken Burns documentary on the "dirty 30's" airs Sunday & Monday night. Should be interesting and Burns usually does good work. Lots of interviews with individuals who lived through it.

Maybe some good insight on what's to come in the next decade?

http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/dustbowl/
 
I wish we could get the farmers, ag departments at the Universities, government intervention now, before it's to late! It is beginning now.We have had to major "dust bowl" wind storms. One as recently as Kansas opening day of pheasant season. It is the preccusor of what is ahead. We are hell bent on remaking the errors we should have been wise enough to avoid. The new adage that "our modern technology makes the thirties impossible because we are so much more advanced now", is poppycock. They said that when the newfangled industrial age agriculture, in the 30's. Farmers here are tilling the ground wholesale. The grass is golf course high already. Why? because thats what they do, because their dad did, the ag department tell them it's good, and of course it will rain and this will be one time event, next year wll be "normal". Despite being at least 14" inches of rain short. This historically, might be normal on the great plains.
 
Prolonged drought events on the great plains are common, cyclical events. After the Dust Bowl there was a six year drought in the 1950's and then the roughly two year event that peaked in 1988.

If it rains next year all will likely move on and the inevitable will just get postponed. If we see a prolonged dry period like in the 1950's not so sure. Can we irrigate our way out of another Dust Bowl?
 
Downtown Bang! said:
Prolonged drought events on the great plains are common, cyclical events. After the Dust Bowl there was a six year drought in the 1950's and then the roughly two year event that peaked in 1988.

If it rains next year all will likely move on and the inevitable will just get postponed. If we see a prolonged dry period like in the 1950's not so sure. Can we irrigate our way out of another Dust Bowl?
Click to expand...

We are losing ground irrigating in a normal rainfall year! It should be stopped. The corn seeders are selecting for varieties which have low water capability, not to use in traditional corn country, but to make it so they can plow sand dunes, and permanent pasture!
 
oldandnew said:
We are losing ground irrigating in a normal rainfall year! It should be stopped. The corn seeders are selecting for varieties which have low water capability, not to use in traditional corn country, but to make it so they can plow sand dunes, and permanent pasture!
Click to expand...

My comment on irrigation was intended as snarky commentary. I understand that the acquifer is in bad shape and understand that better more sustainable practices rather than irrigation is the answer. Won't stop people from trying to drain it if we do end up in an extended dry period.
 
Seems like I see more Fall tillage across the country. Even in normal years Fall tillage has plenty of erosion by wind and snow melt and heavy rains. A dry open Winter and the soil will be blowing away all Winter with every Wind. Dry Spring and Following Summer We have a dust bowl. Likely, I think in at least in some regions.
High price of grains, producers want to cover more ground, get as much done as possible in the Fall.
 
I watched last night and while I didn't enjoy it, it was informative. I see some similarities between the Great Plow Up and Ethanol. The government stepped in and set an artificially high price for wheat in the early 1900s and now the government (not the consumer) is creating an artificial market for ethanol.

Maintaining a balance between grassland and cropland seems to be the long term solution to prevent another dust bowl, but now, the drought has hit again and the same mistakes are being made all over again. Taking acreage out of CRP and converting grassland to cropland because they can make more money from ethanol, then in the middle of that we have the drought which leads farmers to convert more grassland to crops to try and boost production. I am not sure where the balance lies today but I would prefer to see us err on the side of preserving grassland rather than plowing it under and that CRP is an investment in Dust Bowl prevention.
 
It's going to happen again. I did not see fall plowing for years on a lot of SD groud. I suppose the thinking is if we do get moisture, it will sink in. We had dust bowl conditions a about 20 years ago west of Pierre in a very large area where the ditches filled up with gumbo dust (hate to call it dirt) after the bankers convinced the cattle ranchers to switch to wheat as the cattle market was down and they were behind on payments. So they all borrowed enough to buu half a mill in new equipment. Afew years ltter the Bad River is full of silt and so is the ditch. Then a Federal program to save the Bad River drainage which included CRP. Now corn is king and we pulled the plow out of the barn again.
 
Uncle Buck said:
It's going to happen again. I did not see fall plowing for years on a lot of SD groud. I suppose the thinking is if we do get moisture, it will sink in. We had dust bowl conditions a about 20 years ago west of Pierre in a very large area where the ditches filled up with gumbo dust (hate to call it dirt) after the bankers convinced the cattle ranchers to switch to wheat as the cattle market was down and they were behind on payments. So they all borrowed enough to buu half a mill in new equipment. Afew years ltter the Bad River is full of silt and so is the ditch. Then a Federal program to save the Bad River drainage which included CRP. Now corn is king and we pulled the plow out of the barn again.
Click to expand...

yup, history has a tendency to repeat itself...ag department has a short memory.....nothing new here. :rolleyes:
 
There's a large area in Eastern MT where the land was put into CRP 10-15 years ago. fence lines are still there, many places You can just see the tops of the "T" posts. wires are under ground. The fences and vegetation along the fencelines acted like a snow fence stopping the wind blown dust. Those fence lines are about 5-6 feet higher then the adjacent fields. That's how much of the soil and sub soil blew away. NOW GUESS WHAT?
Many thousands of acres of that ground is now Fall tilled, ready for Wheat in the Spring.
Before the dust bowl this land was as good as any cropland anywhere. Now it's like farming gravel.
 
I'm glad that the Ken Burn's series was noted on this site. I was in eastern Montana this fall when there were days of high winds and watched Tumble Weeds blow across the stubble fields like the animals you see in pictures you see of game herds in Africa. They fetched up against the barbed wire and made a solid fence that started to accumulate the soil mnmthunting described. I saw a dust storm just east of Froid that if I was in Calif. I would assume was a very large fire in timber because it was so dark. It was Montana going to North Dakota.
Because time has passed doesn't mean that we've learned from our mistakes. Burn's film points out the problem with farming in arid land subject to drought. Low rain and poor crops, plow more to hope to break even after next year and keep your land. Good rain and crops, plow more to get rich and buy more land to plow. Great but sad documentary.
 
I watched both parts of "Dust Bowl" last night.
I recall hearing often listening to those stories about the hard times of the 30's from my parents and grandparents.
It's another generation now that is Fall tilling and busting up the grasslands, only difference now is it not native sod it's the stuff that was planted into CRP , pastureland etc to slow the erosion. Land that should absolutely be left in sod.

So many of those trees planted in the 30's. Shelter belts etc. You go out across North Dakota and these same shelter belts are being dozed and burned, everywhere, not just isolated cases. The USDA with it's war on Russian Olives is encouraging it.

OH MY!!!:eek:
 
Here's what shocks me. On this hunting /conservation? blog. That there is very little outrage, or even discussion about what happpened and what is happening NOW! It makes you realize, as the famous historians say about the formation of this country, only 10% of the population, in area that now makes this great land favored independence, the rest were drug along to war and eventual freedom, inspite of themselves. Thank heaven to foresighted individuals then, I hope we have the leadership to save us from the "sahara zone", that another president did with the last time, also at a time of desperate depression of finance and hope. I will throw my lot in with the 10%.We better start making a ruckus!
 
Here in northcentral WI we have an area called "Glacial Lake Wisconsin" that is a large, flat, sandy soil area where a lot of potatoes are grown. I've been in some of those fields with a shovel and tested the soil. 1" of topsoil is all that remains and you hit the plow pan, hard as concrete. And that was almost 30 years ago. for a while they worked hard to promote tree breaks on fencelines and most of those are being tilled under. In addition to the fact there is no topsoil anymore, they over-fertilize and over-herbicide, and the ground acquifer is only 5'-6' down. In those sandy soils, the chemicals leach right on through and there have been problems with contaminated wells. We don't typically know what dust storms are here, but there are days when you can see the dust blowing off those fields and it's sad.
 
My take-away after watching both parts of the movie was this. Thanks God the government stepped in and did not let this part of the country become another desert in the US. IMO it is a great conservation success story and shows how important the roll of FSA and NRCS has become in our environment.

There sure is no shortage of negative banter on this site about governmental bashing but an objective look would prove otherwise.

The show proved that drought will happen and tillage does not play well with it.

It is clear that we have a long ways to go to care for our soils and it has also proven that land owners cannot be left to take care of the resource themselves but actually, yes, needs government intervention on the publics behalf to be better stewards of the resources they have at their disposal.
 
I sure hope that Washington is taking real notice of what is happening in the plains states right now. It's bad. The winds here in KS have been kicking 30 plus in the afternoons and dust is in the air. Not so bad in east KS that you can see it but your eyes sure know it's there.

I can wash my truck and within hours there is a film of dust already formed on it.
 
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