Miina Porkka April 17, 2020 4.40pm BST
When the southern Great Plains of the US were blighted with a series of droughts in the 1930s, it had an unparalled impact on the whole country. Combined with decades of ill-advised farming policy, the result was the Dust Bowl. Massive dust storms began in 1931 and devastated the country’s major cereal producing areas. US wheat and maize production crashed by 32% in 1933 and continued to fall for the rest of the decade as more droughts hit.By 1934, 14 million hectares of agricultural land was degraded beyond use, while a further 51 million hectares (roughly three-quarters the size of Texas) was rapidly shedding its topsoil. Millions of people lost their livelihoods. The desperate migration that followed was immortalised in John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath.
But what consequences would a disruption like the Dust Bowl have now, when the Great Plains of the US are not just the breadbasket of America, but a major producer of staple cereals that are exported around the world? As part of an international team of researchers, we ran a computer simulation to find out.
We simulated how a modern dust bowl would impact global food supplies and the result is devastating
Miina Porkka April 17, 2020 4.40pm BST When the southern Great Plains of the US were blighted with a series of droughts in the 1930s, it had an unparalled impact on the whole country. Combined with decades of ill-advised farming policy, the result was the Dust Bowl. Massive dust storms began in 1931 and devastated… [Read More]
