Yep, they got swept up in WWI row crop mania. So did every other section of the country. The South and the Midwest paid for it, too.
Soil conservation practices weren't common knowledge to American farmers back then, either. The American Ag community learned a lot about soil conservation through this calamity. So yeah, this would've played like pure, distilled hindsight back in 1936.
I guess the main thing, though, is that there was a major government initiative starting in the 1880's to get the plains settled and converted into farmland. The Department of Agriculture worked hand in hand with real estate agents and bankers in marketing campaigns. The Expanded Homestead Act of 1909 lured legions of the poor to a part of the country that had been previously understood as a grass-covered desert.
It's important as a visual aid, but it hardly tells the story, and it's easy to understand why this didn't sit well with farmers back then.
Soil conservation practices weren't common knowledge to American farmers back then, either. The American Ag community learned a lot about soil conservation through this calamity. So yeah, this would've played like pure, distilled hindsight back in 1936.
I guess the main thing, though, is that there was a major government initiative starting in the 1880's to get the plains settled and converted into farmland. The Department of Agriculture worked hand in hand with real estate agents and bankers in marketing campaigns. The Expanded Homestead Act of 1909 lured legions of the poor to a part of the country that had been previously understood as a grass-covered desert.
It's important as a visual aid, but it hardly tells the story, and it's easy to understand why this didn't sit well with farmers back then.