'The Dust Bowl'

As disastrous as this year's drought has been " with up to 65% of the USA enduring drought conditions at one point in mid-September and likely billions of dollars in crop losses " it can't really compare to the decade-long tragedy of the Dust Bowl. How bad was the drought of the 1930s? "The Dust Bowl belongs on the list of the top three, four, or five environmental catastrophes in world history," according to historian Donald Worster of the University of Kansas. A combination of factors, including government incentives and several unusually wet years, led farmers to plant much of the region with wheat in the 1920s. A shortsighted and ill-advised farming practice " known as "the Great Plow-up" " occurred when farmers essentially gouged out huge swaths of topsoil to plant their wheat. "People moved in and changed the ecosystem that had been there for thousands or millions of years," says climatologist Brian Fuchs of the National Drought Mitigation Center. And then