Ken Burns burns the Dust Bowl

 In the PBS special “Dust Bowl” Ken Burns impresses with his anecdotes and photos, but leaves out so much explanation that we are left wondering how the dust occurred and what the lessons were.  According to the narrative, farmer greed and climate change were the culprits.   Billed as 'one of the Worst Man-made Disasters' the continual insinuation is that the prairies should have never been plowed, and that climate could once again ruin us.  Nice political correctness, but poor facts.

I taught a class about the Dust Bowl for NOC and North Central OK Historic Assoc. a dozen years ago.  Here are some facts that are quite relevant as we go into our third year of drought here in Oklahoma.  Summer-Fall plowing is a time-honored technique farmers use to mellow a seedbed and this was a major fault of the 1930’s dust.  It simply works too well here.  Daily winter freezing and thawing yields a fine dustbed by spring. If it’s too dry for the wheat to grow, the land lies barren and windswept.  Windspeeds in the Great Plains are the highest in N. America.  18 inch annual rainfall, normal for the panhandle, dropped by half in 1931-1938 for reasons that are still under debate.  We know the area is subject to droughts.  All over western Oklahoma and other states are ancient stabilized dune fields of small hummocky hills and no apparent drainage system.  The closest one to Ponca City is between Tonkawa and LaMont on the north side of US 60.  The soils west of Guthrie/Ponca City/Wichita are alkali because the dry climate doesn’t leach organic matter and minerals  much.  This makes a delightfully rich grassland.   But it is also makes a “friable” soil.  Pick up a clod, squeeze, and it turns to dust easily.  The soils of Western Kansas and SW Nebraska are some of the richest in the world, in places with over 30 feet of topsoil—blown-in naturally from the north as the last glaciers retreated.

Why does soil blow?  Soil particles first begin a hopping, fracturing regime called saltation which is enhanced by flat barren dirt.  Saltation creates particles so small they can go airborne. Burns did make a good point about a few speculative farmers who didn’t live on the land, but had the acreage plowed.  These “suitcase farmers” abandoned their lands during the Dust Bowl adding to the problem.  There were others who realized how to fix the farming practices, but  having neighbors who were clueless, they were powerless to stop the havoc.  Contour strip farming was the first attempt to control the dust and it helps a bit.  Emergency contour tillage works temporarily.  In the 40’s the better practice of fallowing became widespread. Land is left in stubble with minimum tillage to control weeds for a year.  This augments soil moisture and stops the blowing. Today, no-till agriculture is practiced.  And with irrigation the Great Plains has become a new world.

 Yet we know that prolonged droughts are likely, where desert threshold rainfall is less than 15”.  Even with modern farming practices, a 20-year drought would lead to a lot of blowing dirt.  We saw it blow one wild windy day in October this year aided by construction west of Blackwell.  But the likelihood of another Dust Bowl is not large. So then what was the dust bowl--man-made disaster, or yet another example of how learning leads to success?  I’d prefer the latter. "Manmade Disaster" is like blaming the first guy who tried to catch petroleum from a seep with a blanket for the oil spills.  Learn how to drill a well!