GEOG 130 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: The Dust Bowl (Film), Dust Bowl, Shock Absorber
The Dust Bol - Agriultural Welfare “tate February
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• Prairie dogs were a nuisance to farmers
• Dustbowl
o Aftermath: there was a tall layer of dust
o Event had a lot of ecological and social consequences, as well as changing the structure of
agriculture in the US (system of agricultural policies to buffer people during hard times –
variations in ecological conditions through the welfare system)
• Dust Bowl culture
o Key component: land was understood as a means to make money
o Jeffersonian expansionary democracy and the shaping of American agriculture by an evolving
capitalism
• There is ot God est of “alia “alia- town in Kansas)
• Cycle of debt and expansion in 1890s
o Farmers plowed up lands to take advantage of the high food prices, but then there was a big
drought
o 1/3 of the entire region was plowed by 1935 – land was nothing more than a form of capital
• How do you explain this ulture?
o Needed farmers that were committed to the land
o Those who survived the dust bowl
• Depression and the Dust Bowl – Welfare state
o Simultaneous economic and ecological crises that were immediate
o Agencies had to solve these problems, or else they were seen as failures
• Contradiction of capitalist agriculture
o Ne Deal’s oudru as to get the aggregate of farers to produce less as a group –
every farmer wanted to produce more to get more money
o Paradox - Intrusion of federal government into the lives of other people because the
government wanted to convince farmers to produce less
o Agriculture welfare state – environmental stability for long-ter sustaied yield ad profit
• Dust Bowl ideologies
o Farers did’t ause the Dust Bol, the drought did lae ature
• Variability vs. stability
o Result was keyed to a strong cyclic pattern
o A good year is just as bad as a bad year – a good year you earn a lot but in a bad year you
earn very little
• Capital-state compromise
o Whe the state fails to address the prole, the state’s legitiay is i dout
o Profits are privatized, risks are socialized
• The state and nature
o As a shock asorer for people ad iestets that are threateed y eiroetal risks
o As an engineer and producer of built environments suited to accumulation (ie: levies)
o Knowledge and information for private production (ie: market forecasts, weather forecasts)
o Profitable activities are private and unprofitable activities were considered public
(government)
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