The Dust Bowl
Ploughing the Great Plains grassland turns it into an airborne desert.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 8 years
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Industrial, Holocene
Deep ploughing had destroyed the native grasses whose roots held the soil of the southern plains. When drought arrives in 1931, the topsoil simply blows away in storms that darkened skies as far as Washington. Around 2.5 million people leave the region. It is the clearest early demonstration that industrial agriculture can destroy the resource it depends on, and it produced the first serious soil conservation policy anywhere.