National Grasslands in the Dust Bowl

National grasslands were unsuccessful as an agent of landuse reform in the Dust Bowl. Local willingness to sell both grassland and cropland prevailed over federal acquisition of severely eroded cropland. Demonstration of grazing as a landuse has not been as effective as rental payments from federal programs in motivating cropland retirement. Current managerial plans for two national grasslands indicate future emphasis on nonagricultural goals and grazing regulation. T HE national grasslands are a relic of New Deal land-utilization projects on the Great Plains. Those projects were an experiment by the federal government to restore severely eroded grasslands and to stabilize agriculture in the Dust Bowl through landuse reform.' This article examines that experiment from the perspective of fifty years of hindsight. A comparison of landuses and conditions during the 1930s and the late 1980s in two national grassland administrative districts is the basis of the analysis. The results indicate that local concerns for immediate financial relief took precedence over long-term restoration of cropland to grassland. Since 1938 the national grasslands evolved from an active federal demonstration of appropriate landuse to a passive stock of government-maintained grazing pastures. Managerial emphasis currently is shifting to nonfarm activities, especially uses that promote native grasslands rather than livestock pastures. The term Dust Bowl became part of the vernacular language of the Great Plains during the Great Depression of the 1930s. One of the most innovative programs in response to the Dust Bowl crisis centered on federal acquisition of land in designated land-utilization projects. Strategies to achieve the stated goals of landuse reform and agricultural adjustment focused on restoration of a grass cover to failed and abandoned cropland and on increasing the acreage devoted to feed crops and livestock.2 The idea of removing private cropland from production through governmental acquisition of land had been proposed in the 1920s.3 In 1929 the Agricultural Marketing Act gave the Federal Farm Board authority to conduct surveys to determine the suitability of removing selected agricultural land from production. Conferences and reports by presidential committees between 1931 and 1934 culminated in a report from the National Resources * I thank Neil Salisbury and John Hidore for their helpful criticism. Craig Torbenson drafted the maps. 1 R. Douglas Hurt, The National Grasslands: Origin and Development in the Dust Bowl, Agricultural History 59 (1985): 246-259. 2 Lewis C. Gray, Federal Purchase and Administration of Submarginal Lands in the Great Plains, Journal of Farm Economics 21 (1939): 123-131. 3 Albert Z. Guttenberg, The Land Utilization Movement of the 1920s, Agricultural History 50 (1976): 477-490. * DR. LEWIS is an assistant professor of geography at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, North Carolina 27412. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.159 on Sat, 22 Oct 2016 04:29:16 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW Planning Board that recommended the return of 6.5 million acres of harvested cropland to use as livestock pasture.4 Federal funding of land acquisition began in late December 1933, when the Public Works Administration transferred $25 million to the Emergency Relief Administration. Authority for the assignment of funds came under the Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 and, from 1935 to 1937, under the Emergency Relief Act.5 Before those acts expired, new funds for land purchases were made available under the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act of 1937. Title III of this act changed the status of the land-utilization program from a temporary response to the Dust Bowl crisis to a permanent policy of the Department of Agriculture. The secretary of agriculture was empowered to design and implement a long-term program that included retirement of submarginal lands from cultivation.6 To compensate for the loss of taxable land base, 25 percent of the revenues received by the federal government from fees collected for grazing on the retired acreage were to be returned to the counties in which Bankhead-Jones Title III lands were located. During the first year of the act, 80 percent of the appropriated funds were allocated to purchase of land on the Great Plains. In the Dust Bowl of the southern high plains, the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) gained control of 736,451 acres at an average cost of $3.56 an acre.7 IMPLEMENTING LAND-UTILIZATION POLICY New Deal land-utilization policy initially emphasized two objectives: financial relief through sale of land to the government, and relocation of bankrupt farmers from severely eroded land.8 When relocation proved to be an unpopular policy, the SCS began to stress the benefits that would accrue from removing land from crop production. The rhetoric at the federal level highlighted the alleviation of the suffering resulting from severe erosion. Governmental planners also believed that demonstration of grazing as an alternative landuse on submarginal croplands would induce farmers to be persuaded to return land ill-suited for cultivation to pasture.9 4 National Resources Planning Board, A Report of National Planning and Public Works in Relation to Natural Resources and Including Land Use and Water and Mineral Resources (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1934). 5 Keith A. Agrow, Our National Grasslands: Dustland to Grassland, American Forests 68 (January 1962): 10-12, 48-50. 6 Land Policy Circular, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Resettlement Administration, Division of Land Utilization, Washington, D.C., July 1937, 2. 7 H. H. Wooten, The Land Utilization Program, 1934-1964, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Agricultural Economic Report No. 85 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1965). 8 R. Douglas Hurt, The Dust Bowl: An Agricultural and Social History (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981), 23-25; Donald Worster, The Dust Bowl, the Southern Plains in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 124, 185-192; Paul Bonnifield, The Dust Bowl: Men, Dirt, and Depression (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1979), 169-184. 9 Gray, footnote 2 above; The Great Plains Committee, The Future of the Great Plains (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1936); E. D. G. Roberts, The Land Utilization Program in the Southern Great Plains, Science 88 (1938): 289-292. 162 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.159 on Sat, 22 Oct 2016 04:29:16 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms NATIONAL GRASSLANDS IN THE DUST BOWL

Geography · American Environmental and Regional History · American Literature and Culture · Environmental Science

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