Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared California to be a drought-ridden hell hole. Not his exact words, but close, when he declared a state emergency because it hasn't rained enough in the state for three years.
This paragraph from Reuters in particular caught my eye. "As many as 95,000 agricultural jobs will be lost, communities will be
devastated and some growers in the most economically productive farm
state simply are not able to plant, state officials said, calling the
current drought the most expensive ever."
That language seems awfully familiar to what I imagine the Dust Bowl to be like.
Among other things, the Dust Bowl was caused by an eight-year drought and high winds that turned loose topsoil into dust storms. As it turns out, the
preeminent Dust Bowl experts are right here in Kansas at
the Wind Erosion Research Unit (WERU) at Kansas State University.
WERU
says that "wind
erosion in the United States is most widespread on agricultural land in
the Great Plains states." Even if California faces a major prolonged
drought like the great plains did in the 1930s, it will avoid major wind
erosion because of ocean winds and "annually planted
sunflower barriers" that protect special crops.
California actually became the largest produce grower because of the Dust Bowl. According to a PBS' series
on the Dust Bowl, "It was the largest migration in American
history. By
1940, 2.5 million people had moved out of the Plains states; of those,
200,000 moved to California." Soon, the descendants of Dust Bowl
transplants may move back to find work on farms in the Midwest.
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