Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
4
CHAPTER FOUR
Soil
The political ecology of
soil degradation
(1979) claims the Dust Bowl was one of the most
devastating human-induced ecological disasters in
history. As with many of the cases of soil erosion
we discuss in this chapter, the Dust Bowl was the
product of a number of environmental and social
factors. At one level, as you would expect, the Dust
Bowl was partly caused by an enduring drought
that lasted for much of the 1930s. But the Dust
Bowl was also a product of the agricultural
practices that had become established in the region.
In the pursuit of the great profits that could be
made from the growing of wheat, farmers engaged
in ploughing up vast swathes of the natural
grasslands found in the Prairies. The so-called
'Great Plow Up' left the soils of the southern Great
Plains exposed to the processes of soil erosion in
ways they had never been before. When drought
and strong winds came, vast swathes of the fertile
topsoil of the Plains was removed. This process of
soil erosion had two main consequences. First, it
made it very difficult to produce agricultural crops
in the region, thus consigning large numbers of
agricultural families to poverty and hunger.
Second, the Dust Bowl became associated with
vast dust storms (comprised of the soil that
had been removed from the land). These storms,
or 'blackouts' as they were often called, would
regularly block out the sun (thus impairing
agricultural productivity in the region) and cause
respiratory problems among the resident popula-
tion. Given these strange, almost otherworldly
4.1 INTRODUCTION: GETTING
UNDER THE PLANET'S SKIN
Have you ever wondered what it would be like
to live in a world without soil? For eight years
during the 1930s those living on the Great Plains
of the USA and Canada got a chilling insight into
just what such a world might look like. The Great
Plains of North America (referred to as the Prairie
in Canada) make up one of the most significant
agricultural regions in the world. Covering an
area of some 400 million acres that runs through
the heart of the North America continent (see
Figure 4.1),
the flat relief and fertile soils of this
region have made it highly conducive to a range
of agricultural practices. The most significant crop
grown on the Great Plains is wheat, but the region
is also synonymous with the cultivation of barley,
corn, cotton and soybeans (among many other
things) (Hudson, 2011). In addition to supporting
the growing of food crops, the Plains are also
home to vast ranches that are devoted to the
rearing of sheep and cattle.
Throughout the history of the US and Canada,
the Great Plains have played a vital role in feed-
ing the rapidly expanding populations of these
countries. But during the 1930s something hap-
pened to disrupt the ecological balance of this
region. During this time period a vast dust bowl
developed in the southern section of the Plains.
The environmental historian Donald Worster
