Volume 18 , Issue 25

1937 - U. S. Dust Bowl In Southwest Blooms Again

It was in The Hancock Democrat, Greenfield, Indiana, dated 5 August 1937, Thursday, page 5, reported on the dust bowl and the suitcase farmers.

Found on Newspapers.com

Dallas, Texas -- After a six year drift to extreme aridity the southern dust bowl pendulum had started its swing back to abundant rainfall. A region of nearly 95,000,000 acres in five southwestern states was being transformed from a near desert into a landscape green with vegetation and golden with the harvest 200,000,000 bushels of hard, red, winter wheat. Late May and middle of June rains were responsible.

The farm population of the southern high plains in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle, northeastern New Mexico, southeastern Colorado and southwestern Kansas, was now in a position to cooperate effectively in a regional program of rehabilitation and reclamation.

Those familiar with the country insist that the dust bowl would not become a great American desert. With certain changes in the type of farming practiced there was every reason to believe that the region would take its place among the nation's most important crop and livestock producing territories.

An amazing change was already apparent. Tens of thousands of acres of soil, much of it subject to blowing in a region that had a normal wind velocity of 15 to 18 miles per hour, are now safeguarded by scientifically constructed terraces and contours which follow the slope of the land and prevent both wind and water erosion. Even gently sloping pastures were assured of capturing maximum rainfall by a series of simple furrow which follow the contour lines. Water which would have been lost in shallow depressions or in creeks and rivers was now held in place for use of crops or grass.

Those unfamiliar with this new agriculture would be astonished to see great fields furrowed with "middle-busters," a type of plow which throws the soil in two directions instead one. Some of the furrows on the thinner soils may be 15 to 20 inches deep. In each furrow thousands of healthy dark green jaunty seedlings of drouth-resisting kafirs were growing lustily, protected against wind and at the same time assured of all the rain that falls. This great family of African grain sorghums was at home in a region of 10 to 18 inches of rainfall. As the winds drift the soil from the crest of the furrow it is sifted among the stalks down in the trench. Millions of acres of milo, kafir, feterita, dares, hegari and Sudan grass were ripening on the high plains of the southwestern Untied States back then and would return an appreciable measure of stability to the region at harvest time int he fall.

The people of the dust bowl were beginning to adopt various methods which in times of more abundant rainfall were not believed necessary. These methods had been worked out by natural scientists of the various state and federal experiment stations located strategically from Hays, Kansas, and Guymon, Oklahoma, to Dalhart and Amarillo, Texas. For more that an quarter of century technical workers had evolved a system which in many respects was the opposite of farming methods in the east and Middle West or the South. Everyone now recognizes that the limiting factor in crop production of the southwest was moisture. Rainfall must be captured when it falls, for there may be no more later in the season.

The popular notion that the desolation which characterized the dust bowl region on and off during the past six years was only partly true. Even during the driest seasons the official rainfall at various stations was sufficient so that if farmers had been prepared to capture it for crop use they might have escaped at least part of the disaster. Terracing, conturing and trenching, as well as plowing at the right time in order to leave the land in rough colds, would enable farmers to store moisture in the soil on which crops may draw at once or later.

The troubles of the southern dust bowl were largely man-made. For millions of years the short grass of the high plains maintained itself and with it millions buffaloes and antelopes. later if supported tens of thousands of whirr faced cattle which fattened on the nutritious buffalo and drama grasses. later came the farmers in their migration from Ohio, Tennessee or Kentucky seeking farmland on which they expected to follow their old methods. The introduction of long established agricultural methods, which had been evolved in regions of plentiful rainfall, failed in a semiarid region where the air was keen and dry at an elevation of between 3000 and 5000 feet.

Slipshod methods, whether in farming or in handling range animals, were blamed by students of the problem for the devastation wrought in the high plains farming areas in recent dry years. Overstocking the range by cattlemen also contributed to the problem. The hoof-beats of thousands of animals in a mad search for grass and weeds and water steadily churned the dry soil of the Plains into a ash heap. Its precious organic matter, which for ages had been stored in the form of decayed grass, was picked up by winds engendered by extreme heat and whisked across the continent, leaving only the heavier granules, the granitic sand - parent material from he Rockies. These sand in turn drifted into huge dunes, traveling slowly across barren fields, engulfing farm houses, barns, shed and implements. There followed a migration of peoples out of a region which had been transformed into a near desert through the carelessness of man. What had taken thousands of years to build up was destroyed in a few seasons of record temperatures and scant rain.

Coupled with the droughts came a time of low market prices for corn, grain sorghums, fodder and livestock. That, investigators say, encouraged farmers to run their cattle, hops and sheep inter fields to harvest what they might. Again the constant treat of animal hoofs converted futile fields into dust heaps. Crops and virgin land together became the sport of the winds.

Old timers of the region lay a large part of the blame on the "suitcase" farmer and the absentee landowner. They charge the latter with knowing nothing of the limitations of the region and with sending in transient farmers to plant huge fields of wheat in a gamble with rain and markets. Vast areas of the southwestern plains were owned by investors in Chicago, Kansas City, Des Moines or Detroit. When World War prices aroused the cupidity of absentees owners wheat farming was pushed well beyond safe limits as measured by annual rainfall, it was charged. It sis this fringe of the dust bowl, somewhere between the 20-inch rainfall line and the Rocky Mountains, which the Federal Government was planning to restore to its original grass cover. The people of the region were in general agreement with this program because their experience told them that the soil scientists and agronomists were right.

In this program of rehabilitating an entire region, wheat was the crop which lends itself most widely to the scheme. H. H. Fennell, regional soil consecrator and authority on semi-arid land use, at his office in Amarillo, was outlining a program in which wheat played a most important part. He and his staff agreed that the matted root system of the wheat plant makes it ideal as an agent against wind erosion when the land is turned up in large clods.

Cooperators with the Federal Government's program must follow minute instructions which would insure, after each crop, a residue of vegetative matter consisting of roots and stalks. Immediately after grain harvest, which on the plains involves the use of thousands of tractor-drawn combines, the stubble is disked. One of the practices is to leave one-third or one-half of the wheat farm fallow each year. This encouraged growth of weeds and other vegetation, stops blowing and increases organic matter which is so badly needed since the dust storms blew away so much of the fine topsoil.

The Russian thistle or tumbleweed had long been a pest on the plains. It was strange what a change in attitude had come about towards this interloper introduced many years ago by the long bearded Mennonites when they brought with them their prized Kharkoff wheat from Russia.years of drought and almost total crop failure had wrought a change in the people.

One settler not far from Dalhart, Texas, soon after the big June rains, which started the Plains Region on its comeback, sat looking out of the window of his little windblown dugout. Instead of the blinding blanket of shifting sand and soil the landscape was green with he tender growth of seeds quickened into life by belated moisture.

The dust bowl was well on the road back to stability. Its farming would be governed by lessons learned during six years of hardships. Operations would be better adjusted to equipment and to season. One important method available from federal sources was an exact measurement of the stored moisture in land at planting time. If there is not a specified minimum of moisture for wheat no wheat would be allowed on land in which the government had an interest through crop loans or other assistance. This moisture information would be broadcast widely for guidance of all farmers of the region. Unplanned attempts at wholesale farming would be discouraged. Ten years ago (1927) these methods would have been frowned upon by farmers, but today (1937) they were heeded.
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