Dust Bowl refers to an environmental catastrophe that took place in the Plains states during the 1930s. A long drought was made worse by short-sighted agricultural practices and an entire part of the country was turned into dust. The Dust Bowl became a major factor in the Great Depression, too ("The Dust Bowl"). What I found most interesting about this subject is that the Dust Bowl proves the need for changes to farming practices around the world. In the 1930s and before, farmers did not realize they were depleting the soil by planting only one crop. Their lack of foresight can be forgiven and was corrected relatively quickly.
However, farmers today have access to a wealth of information from science and agricultural technologies. That information shows what farmers can do to prevent situations like the Dust Bowl. Unfortunately, the agro-business sector ignores many of the warning signs that their practices are harming not just the environment but people, too. Chemical pesticides and fertilizers as well as genetically modified foods have unknown consequences on human and animal life. They are used for the same reasons farmers depleted the soils in Oklahoma in the 1930s, which was to produce a surplus of crops in the hopes of making bigger profits.
Many of those consequences are long-term and might not be noticeable for at least one generation into the future. I think the Dust Bowl situation is interesting because the consequences of poor farming practices did take many decades to manifest. If the Dust Bowl teaches us anything it is that we need to think more in terms of long-term results rather than short-term gains.
Finally, I appreciated learning how the Dust Bowl phenomenon can be applied to other human-caused environmental problems. Any time human beings override common sense in the pursuit of profit, disaster can occur. Whether planting corn and soybeans instead of diverse crops or whether overproducing livestock to fuel the fast food industry, many environmental problems are caused by human ignorance or plain stupidity.
Reference
"The Dust Bowl." Retrieved July 13, 2009 from http://www.usd.edu/anth/epa/dust.html
