A short writing sample on the dust bowl

Dust Bowl Prevention: Farm Bill Trumps Carbon Reductions

The Great Depression and Dust Bowl were times of suffering for America, and the disaster still has a place in the collective memory of Americans, especially as natural disasters become more common and high temperatures rise. Recent drought conditions in the Midwest, which resulted in a 13% drop in corn yields (Wilson 2012), bring fears of a new “dust bowl” and the loss of American agricultural dominance. Opinions on the prevention of future dust bowls are varied and ideas address the problem through carbon dioxide reductions and soil conservation policies. The issue in our hands is to find the most feasible solution to prevent another dust bowl, and in the process address problems in the agricultural system. After reviewing current climate change research and the factors behind the 1930s Dust Bowl, it appears that the most effective strategy for preventing another dust bowl is to use America’s agricultural infrastructure and the farm bill to implement conservation practices, many of which were in place until a recent jump in commodities prices and land use.

Unfortunately, lobbying forces using the 2012 drought and other recent climactic events as agenda items for carbon reduction programs have hampered progress towards a solution. Joseph Romm, a former energy secretary, tells us that “the only sane response [to preventing a dust bowl] is to reduce carbon pollution sharply” (Romm 2012), yet earlier he cites Solomon et al’s 2009 study which highlights the thousand-year lag in time between emissions cessation and climatic cooling (Solomon et al 2009). Romm isn’t alone- Cynthia Burbank, a former transportation official, shares a similar solution to Romm, of cutting carbon emissions and changing transportation (Burbank 2012)- but such authors need a reality check, especially if Solomon et al’s analysis using AOGCM and EMIC long-term climate models (Solomon et al 2009) is indeed accurate. Solomon presents dry-season precipitation drops, a cause of droughts, as an irreversible consequence of carbon dioxide emissions, and states “the physical climate changes that are due to anthropogenic carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere today are expected to be largely irreversible” (Solomon et al 2009). Carbon reductions, then, will do nothing towards preventing drought in the next thousand years, and will not help the immediate need for preserving soil by preventing wind erosion, which will allow American agriculture to continue in good years and maintain soil stability during droughts.

Climate forcing, or the ways in which certain land, air, and water conditions lead to climate patterns, can be used to analyze the anomalies behind the 1930s Dust Bowl. Cook et al looked at forcing by sea surface temperatures (SST) and two sources of land degradation including reduced vegetative cover and increased aerosols from dust, which resulted in a normal drought pattern, forced by warm SST, being moved northward from the American Southwest, with the dust aerosols leading to decreased precipitation (Cook et al 2009). Because dust bowls tend to be multi-year events that extend beyond the first year of drought, reducing wind-driven soil- and thus aerosols- will not only reduce drought conditions in a dry year, but will prevent aerosol forcing from continuing drought patterns into years where such conditions would not normally occur based on SST.

If we look at how agriculture has changed since the Dust Bowl, it is apparent that something was wrong in the 1930s, and was fixed by the 1950s when similar climatic conditions descended on the region. Hansen and Libecap, in their article “Small Farms, Externalities, and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s,” conclude that land holdings greater than 500 acres allowed internal positive feedback for conservation practices which saved America from other dust bowls during the 1950s and 1970s when drought brought similar temperatures and crop failures (Hansen and Libecap 2004). One of the chief reasons cited for the Dust Bowl is a commons tragedy, where too many people sought to farm wheat, and plowed up too much soil because on small holdings the crop-to-conservation ratio for maximum production was greater than the ideal crop-to-conservation ratio for soil conservation (Hansen and Libecap 2004). Thus when preventative soil conservation measures were needed most, before the Soil Conservation Service was implemented in 1937, few could see the potential gains because most landholdings were too small to internalize the downwind benefits of soil conservation (Hansen and Libecap 2004) as soil conservation for downwind areas depends on continuous stripping, hedge rows, and contours which require large farms or cooperation of multiple landowners. Today we have a corporate farm infrastructure where farm management can see soil conservation benefits and receive economic incentives for taking part in soil conservation measures, and if government payments can once again reflect conservation priorities rather than current perverse biofuels desire, wind-driven soil erosion can be kept at bay.

The good news is that we have the tools, through current government-funded programs, to continue the practices of the 1970s and stop wind-driven soil erosion. The belief that we, and especially the government, have done enough in terms of soil conservation, and don’t need to worry about a dust bowl as “we still have a ways to go before things dry out enough over a long enough period of time” (Grammon-Nielsen 2012) may be an over-exaggeration of the current reality of farming, outdated by a few decades and the rise of biofuels. But the basic principle of using known government funding for conservation techniques still holds. Drought will exist as determined by climatic systems far from our reach, but few of the consequences such as dust bowls will persist if we can once again make soil conservation a priority, and at the same time reduce perverse incentives, such as those for biofuels, that lead to unsustainable and soil-loss-inducing practices.

The best tool we have today for managing such soil conservation is the “Farm Bill”, which is a comprehensive piece of legislation regulating everything from corn subsidies to the Natural Resources Conservation Service or NRCS. Jonathan Foley, an environmental scientist, suggests fundamental changes in our agricultural system, as “other farming systems, with more perennial crops, deep-rooted grasses and trees, could increase resilience to extreme weather” (Foley 2012). Ultimately, this type of agriculture, in combination with a reduction in perverse subsidies for monocultures and biofuels production, would be the best for America’s soil and climate in the future. But in today’s political and climatic environment, the most immediate need is to prevent another dust bowl and the loss of soils that have been accumulating for thousands of years. We can do this through the normal four-year farm bill, especially through the elimination of biofuels subsidies and continuation of NRCS funding. The NRCS performs many of the same functions of the 1937 Soil Conservation Service buy paying farmers to take land out of cultivation for soil conservation purposes and providing financial incentives for other forms of sustainable farming that limit soil loss. Since these conservation programs already exist, all we need is to “pass a farm bill that continues financial support for agricultural practices that prevent soil erosion and that restore land unsuitable for agriculture to grassland, forests and wetlands” (Tercek 2012).

The question of how to prevent another dust bowl has been complicated by anti-carbon ideas, but we know that current carbon reductions won’t be reflected for another thousand years, which is too long to wait and watch soil blow away. The solution is the farm bill, through which soil conservation measures that worked in past droughts can be continued in order to encourage sustainable soil use and reduce wind-driven soil loss. Bigger changes, such as reducing perverse subsidies, may be harder to pass in the next farm bill, but if we use Wes Jackson’s “fifty year farm bill” as a template to address the “triple crisis of soil erosion, extreme weather, and dependence on fossil fuel inputs” (Klein 2011, 6), we can begin to improve the sustainability of all parts of American agriculture. By using such land ethics such as Aldo Leopold’s, which “simply enlarges the boundary of the community to include soils, waters… or collectively: the land” (Leopold 1989, 204), we can move towards sustainable agriculture, which may include perennial production and other resource-conserving ideas put forth by Jackson and others. But for now, lets just pass a four-year farm bill.

Word count: 1319 exclusive of in-text citations.

References

Burbank, Cynthia. 2012. “Reduce Fossil Fuel Use.” New York Times, July 25, Room for Debate.

Cook, Benjamin et al. 2009. “Amplification of the North American “Dust Bowl” drought through human-induced land degradation.” PNAS, 106 (13): 4997-5001.

Foley, Jonathan. “Farming Changes Can Limit Risks.” New York Times, July 25, Room for Debate.

Hansen, Zeynep and Gary Libecap. 2004. “Small Farms, Externalities, and the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.” Journal of Political Economy, 112(3): 655-694.

Klein, Naomi. 2011. “Capitalism Vs. the Climate.” The Nation, November 9.

Leopold, Aldo. 1989. “The Land Ethic.” A Sand County Almanac And Sketches Here and There, Special Commemorative Edition. Oxford University Press.

Litz, Franz. Guest lecture delivered November 5, 2012 at Williams College.

Nielsen-Grammon, John. 2012. “Too Early for the Worst Fears.” New York Times, July 25, Room for Debate.

Romm, Joseph. 2012. “Without Carbon Controls, We Face a Dust Bowl.” New York Times, July 25, Room for Debate.

Solomon, Susan et al. 2009. “Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions”. PNAS, 106 (6): 1704-1709.

Tercek, Mark. “For Starters, Renew the Farm Bill.” New York Times, July 25, Room for Debate.

Wilson, Jeff. 2012. “Corn-Crop Drought Damage Less Than Expected Spurs Price Drop.” September 12, Bloomberg, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-12/u-s-corn-crop-estimate-larger-than-expected-after-drought.html