USDA Yearbook (1937)
LONG-TERM POLICIES FOR DROUGHT AREAS
LOOKING toward the development of a long-term program calculated to render future droughts less disastrous in the Great Plains region, a committee appointed by Executive order visited the region, conferred with farmers and public officials in the areas most seriously affected, and drew up a series of recommendations. The committee utilized the experience of numerous Federal and State agencies, many of which had dealt for many years with the problems of the semiarid lands. These agencies placed a mass of material at the committee's disposal, and the conclusions reached were in large part the result of studies and experiments begun long ago. In thus bringing to a focus the best available knowledge on the subject the committee accomplished a work of outstanding public importance and laid a foundation for an effective remedial policy. The committee's findings, in which I heartily concur, may usefully be summarized in this report.
Analyzing the causes of the present disaster, the committee assigned primary importance to the attempt which has been made for several decades to impose on the Great Plains a system of agriculture not adapted to the region. Methods suited on the whole only to a humid region were introduced into a semiarid region. This was largely the outcome of a mistaken public policy. The Federal homestead law, for example, kept land allotments low and required that a portion of each allotment should be plowed. This policy, the committee said, caused immeasurable harm. On the western Plains it was both a stimulus to overcultivation and a condemnation of the cultivators to poverty.
Efforts to cure the trouble by enlarging the allowable individual holding did not work. In western North Dakota and Montana tracts two or three times the size of those actually granted would have been necessary to support farm families adequately. As the ranges were enclosed, feed crops were grown by intensive cultivation and the ranges were overstocked. Overcropping, overgrazing, and improper farm methods generally made the soil loose and unstable, promoted soil blowing and washing, lowered the ground-water level, and rendered the whole area extremely vulnerable to periodic droughts. The settlers themselves could not avoid these mistakes. They lacked both the knowledge and the incentive to do so and were the victims of a mistaken national policy.
Settlement of the western Plains began, the committee observes, at the end of what appears to have been a 40-year dry period. It proceeded during a wet period which now seems to be terminated. Droughts in the region during the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth century were brief and infrequent. Farmers regarded them as exceptional and did not change their farming methods. Weather records indicate, however, that a long dry period preceded the settlement of the Great Plains and that we may now be in the midst of another prolonged dry period. This may have its wet years but may keep the average rainfall for a period below the long-time average.
It is impossible to make a confident forecast. But whether the present drought condition be brief or prolonged, the problems of the Great Plains region will remain essentially the same. Continued farming and ranching by the existing methods will cause continued trouble under any climatic conditions that are likely to prevail. The problem is not the product of a single drought or even of a series of bad years. It is the outgrowth of a mistaken policy pursued for decades.
THE CRITICAL AREA
The Great Plains comprise an area stretching from west central Texas to the border of Canada. On the west the Rocky Mountains are the border. On the east the region is irregularly delimited near the one-hundredth meridian, where formerly the short-grass country merged into the tall-grass or prairie country. In the critical area are Texas Panhandle the Oklahoma Panhandle, northeastern New Mexico, and all the northern portion of the Plains. Annual rainfall is low throughout the entire region. There are short, intense storms, wide fluctuations of temperature, and strong prevailing winds. Frost and snow make wind erosion a less serious danger in the north than in the south; but soil blowing and soil depletion occur throughout the region, particularly in areas of excessive plowing.
Millions of acres of the natural cover, the buffalo grass and grama grass, have been destroyed in the Great Plains and the soil made loose by continued cultivation, decay of grass roots, and reduction of the humus supply. This destructive process has been accelerated since the World War. Eight States lying partly within the region had 103,200,000 acres of harvested crops in 1929, as compared with 87,800,000 in 1919 and 12,200,000 in 1879. How wrong this plow-up program was can be inferred from the records made under the Homestead Act. Only 60 percent of the entries were perfected prior to 1916. Since then only 45 percent of the entries have been perfected.
The results of attempts at the intensive cultivation of the Great Plains over a tremendous aggregate area have been bankruptcy, tax delinquency, absentee ownership, and excessive tenancy. In 1935 the percentage of tenant farmers in eight Great Plains States was 41.1, as compared with 15.5 in 1880. Many farms have been abandoned. Many residents moved out of the Great Plains between 1930 and 1935. The "suitcase farmer", of whom there were too many, visited his land only a few weeks each year for planting and harvesting. In drought years he abandoned his crop. He never made permanent farm improvements. Community services declined. The problem is not simply one of short-term relief but of long-term readjustment and reorganization.
Primarily, it is necessary to check overcropping and overgrazing, so that both soil and water may be conserved, and this end cannot be attained exclusively by individual action. Yet the committee's proposals do not strike at the independence of the individual farmer. On the contrary, the action recommended should restore an independence that has largely been lost. New public policies, designed to correct the existing mistaken policies, will stabilize the economy of the region and increase its power to maintain independent farm families. The fundamental requirement is to bring farming and livestock-raising methods into conformity with the natural conditions.
In many measures the Federal Government should take the initiative, particularly in leadership and guidance. Federal participation may be necessary also in the construction or financing of public works. Past Federal policy encouraged the misuse of the Great Plains. Present Federal policy should encourage the correct use. In emphasizing this principle the committee states that there need not be any conflict of jurisdiction between Federal agencies on the one hand and State and local agencies on the other. It believes that joint cooperative effort will prove workable, and more effective than any other method. Needless to say, the action taken should be continuous over a long period, with Federal and State agencies undertaking the functions they are best able to perform.
Cooke, Morris, et al, Report of the Great Plains Drought Area Committee, 1936
"The settlers lacked both the knowledge and the incentive necessary to avoid these mistakes. They were misled by those who should have been their natural guides. The Federal homestead policy, which kept land allotments low and required that a portion of each should be plowed, is now seen to have caused immeasurable harm. The Homestead Act of 1862, limiting an individual holding to 160 acres, was on the western plains a stimulus to over cultivation, and, for that matter, almost an obligatory vow of poverty."
It is interesting to note that a remarkably similar disaster occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1960s, and for the same reason.
"In theory, the government plans only the required procurement quotas and discretion in land use is left to the individual farm. But as there is no system of differential rents according to a farm's endowment of soil, water, climate and location the relative intensity of land use in competing grain areas can be irrational."
In both cases the real culprits were government bureaucrats who imagined that one acre of land was equivalent to any other acre.