The Return of America's Dust Bowl Days

Blistering Drought Ravages Farmland on Plains
NYTimes: August 29, 2006

MITCHELL, S.D. — With parts of South Dakota at its epicenter, a severe drought has slowly sizzled a large swath of the Plains States, leaving farmers and ranchers with conditions that they compare to those of the Dust Bowl of the 1930’s

The drought has led to rare and desperate measures. Shrunken sunflower plants, normally valuable for seeds and oil, are being used as a makeshift feed for livestock. Despite soaring fuel costs, some cattle owners are hauling herds hundreds of miles to healthier feedlots. And many ranchers are pouring water into “dugouts” — natural watering holes — because so many of them (up to 90 percent in South Dakota, by one reliable estimate) have gone dry.

“It’s a grim situation,” said Herman Schumacher, the owner of a livestock market in Herreid, S.D., a small town near the North Dakota line where 37,000 head of cattle were sold from May through July, compared with 7,000 in the corresponding three months last year. “There’s absolutely no grass in the pastures, and the water holes are all dried up. So a lot of people have no choice but to sell off their herds and get out of the business.”

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

Dust bowl days stay in memories


Dirt invaded everything. It burrowed under fingernails, snuggled into the pores of skin, blackened the sky so dark buses and cars halted in their path and people dared not leave their homes, he said.

“It colored everything that they did. It was never out of their mind that it could happen again,” said Bundy, who presides over a university collection of photographs and documentation of the era.

“Anybody who lived through that, they changed,” he said.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

Drought, water worries cloud skies for US farmers

As the United States bakes in one of the hottest summers since the Dust Bowl years of the 1930s, drought from the Dakotas to Arizona through Alabama has sharpened the focus of farmers on their lifeline: water.

"Farmers aren't going to be able to produce enough food to feed the world because there's a finite amount of water left in the world. There are many folks that will tell you the next war will not be over gold, silver or land, it will be over water," said Ed Burchfield, director of facilities for Valmont Industries, which makes irrigation equipment.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

Drought shrivels worldwide wheat supply

"It is going to be a year of tight supplies," said Mark Samson, vice president for South Asia of the U.S Wheat Associates. "And with expectations of high world prices, more hedge funds are increasingly paying attention to this market." The interest of investment funds in grains is growing and helping to push up prices. The Deutsche Bank Fund now allocates 22.5 percent of its investment funds to wheat and corn trading.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.