How did the dust did the dust bowl start?

Answer 1

the farming methods in the 1920's left much land in the U.S. destroyed. The slash and burned land, along with a great drought, easily kicked up dust when the wind blew, starting the dust bowl of the 1930's

Answer 2

The people in the Agriculture Department in the Nations Capital had no idea concerning the land some 1,500 miles to the west. They thought the same procedures that farmers used in the eastern part of the country would also work in that part of the country. Rather than turn it into ranches, they turned it into farms. The prairie soil was harder to break up than that of the eastern part. By the late 1920s and early 1930s machinery existed that could turn the hard sod of Western Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Panhandle Texas, and Eastern Colorado. The farmers plowed this land is straight rows like they always had. When harvest came they harvested the wheat and cut the straw to the ground and carried off the straw leaving bare ground. The next year they planted their seeds and the rain did not come. Instead wind came. The grass that had held the ground together no longer existed. The wind carried away the dirt. It carried the dirt to the east coast and darkened the sky. It ruined the fields. Since the farmers had not used contour plowing, when the rain finally came it created great gullies and made the rivers muddy. It took a while for the government to get out the big machinery to smooth out the gullies and start planting trees for windbreaks.