Like ants scurrying for work, for food, and most of all for land." In all, 400,000 people left the Great Plains, victims of the combined action of severe drought and poor soil conservation practices. They streamed over the mountains, hungry and restless-restless as ants, scurrying to find work to do-to lift, to push, to pick, to cut-anything, any burden to bear, for food. Car-loads, caravans, homeless and hungry twenty thousand and fifty thousand and a hundred thousand and two hundred thousand. In his 1939 book The Grapes of Wrath, author John Steinbeck described the flight of families from the Dust Bowl: "And then the dispossessed were drawn west-from Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico from Nevada and Arkansas, families, tribes, dusted out, tractored out. With no chance of making a living, farm families abandoned their homes and land, fleeing westward to become migrant laborers. Nineteen states in the heartland of the United States became a vast dust bowl. In some places, the dust drifted like snow, covering farm buildings and houses. The sky could darken for days, and even well-sealed homes could have a thick layer of dust on the furniture. Winds whipped across the plains, raising billowing clouds of dust. With the onset of drought in 1930, the overfarmed and overgrazed land began to blow away. Among the natural elements, the strong winds of the region were particularly devastating. Gradually, the land was laid bare, and significant environmental damage began to occur. In the ranching regions, overgrazing also destroyed large areas of grassland. As the demand for wheat products grew, cattle grazing was reduced, and millions more acres were plowed and planted.ĭry land farming on the Great Plains led to the systematic destruction of the prairie grasses. The farmers plowed the prairie grasses and planted dry land wheat. Most of the settlers farmed their land or grazed cattle. Once a semi-arid grassland, the treeless plains became home to thousands of settlers when, in 1862, Congress passed the Homestead Act. Of War Information Black-and-White Negativesīetween 19, the southwestern Great Plains region of the United States suffered a severe drought. The Dust Bowl Results of a Dust Storm, Oklahoma, 1936. Next Section President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal.Previous Section Art and Entertainment in the 1930s and 1940s.“We will probably see some stressful times late fall, winter- when we may not have the products we’re used to having at the prices we’d like to see them at. Unfortunately, said Colvin, one of the few things guaranteed to grow in these conditions is our grocery bill. So what does it all mean for consumers already feeling the sting of inflation? It’s a small window of opportunity that we have. “Sometimes too much heat, you don’t get as much sap in the spring,” explained Harv West. While maple syrup is not something that’s top of mind in the summertime, Embro area sugar bush operators Harv and Liz West tell CTV News that the arid conditions now are going to be felt next year when it’s time to tap the maples. “I know one other year we had a dry year and through that, it doubled the price of hay a year,” he said. That’s why Embro area cattle farmer Kenny Ulch said he expects the cost to feed his cows is about to spike. It’s needed to feed livestock and is a major ingredient of food production. One crop most of us don’t think much about, as it doesn’t end up in the produce section of our grocery stores, is hay.Īccording to Colvin, hay is also struggling in the heat. We’re getting straight heat, and it’s getting tough on the crops.” “You need the combination, rain, sun, cool days, warm days,” he said. “It’s been close to a month with no rain at all, and that’s where the impact hurts the most, he said. “And that’s the problem we’ve got, it just crumbles into dust.”Ī local director of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, Colvin said lack of rain for crops such as corn and soybeans will mean a lack of yields at harvest time. “I’m down the length of this knife, which is probably a good three inches, and there’s nothing there,” said Thorndale area farmer Crispin Colvin as he scraped away at the dry soil in a field of corn. Farmers around southwestern Ontario are beginning to grow anxious, as the hot dry summer puts this season’s harvest into question.
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