Essay Sample: The Decrease in Crop Prices caused by the Dust Bowl & Drought Impacts on Texas

The Dust Bowl was a very negative event that brought much despair to the U.S. The damage and the cost to fix it was a negative thing that happened especially during WWII. The dust bowl and drought caused the crop prices to go so low, but even then many people could not afford or get an abundant amount of food. The Dust Bowl and drought killed many crops and it was nearly impossible to grow any crops at all. This terrible disaster brought many strains on the U.S. The decreasing prices of crops because of the dust bowl caused many social, economic, and political problems that greatly impacted the U.S. such as making people move away or give up farming, people losing lots of money and going in debt, and having the government spend lots of money for soil conservations and fixing the debt the crops caused.

The social effect the decreasing prices caused was making people move away and give up farming because of how impossible it was to make money off of farming. The people could not afford to suffer there any longer with the severe downfall in crop prices and growth and soon populated urban areas. In the text it says “Oklahoma alone lost 440,000 people to migration. Many of them, poverty-stricken, traveled west looking for work” (History). This shows that the people were so in debt that they gave upon the crops and went west to look for something else. Therefore, the crop prices went even lower with the rapidly decimating number of farmers left to farm.This is how the crop prices impacted many people and their lives back then.

The dust bowl disaster affected the economy because of how low the prices were giving the farmer's little to none profits driving them to poverty. This is why the government and economy lost billions of dollars in a terrible time. In the text it says “The Dust Bowl intensified the crushing economic impacts of the Great Depression and drove many farming families on a desperate migration in search of work and better living conditions” (History). This shows us that people struggled to make money and gave upthe jobs making the economy suffer more as the drought ruinned everything. This is how many people went into poverty even though they were impacted with the boom before the drought.

The political impacts of the crop prices decreasing would be that the government spent lots of money on fixing the drought and they also tried to use different techniques to save the land. This made a major impact on the government as WWII was going on. “Soil conservation was a legitimate part of the AAA program. Farmers received government checks for both acreage reductions and wind control practices” (Gale p4). This shows that the government was using money and tactics to fix the disaster and succeeded but took a toll on the finances. This is how we were politicaly impacted by the dust bowl and the decreased crop prices.

The impacts of the decreasing crop prices from the dust bowl socially, economically and politically is people moving away to urbanized areas, rapid poverty throughout the people in the drought, and the government spending money and trying to fix the land while fighting in the war. This is one of the most important things to happen during the war and it had a major impact on the U.S. and Texas. Therefore, the U.S. struggled for those hard and long years of disasters.