num_pages: 256
description: This is a powerful original account of one mans efforts to raise wheat on his farm in Meade County Kansas during the 1930s. Lawrence Svobida tells of farmers fighting in the front-line trenches putting in crop after crop year after year only to see each crop in turn destroyed by the elements. Although not a writer by trade Svobida undertook to record what he saw and experienced to help the reader to understand what is taking place in the Great Plains region and how serious it is. He wrote of the need for better farming methodsthe only way he felt the destruction could be halted or confined. Well before the principles of an ecological movement were widely embraced Svobida urged a public acceptance of the sovereign rights of the states and the nation to regulate the use of land by owners . . .so that it may be conserved as a national resource. This graphic account of farm life in the Dust Bowlperhaps the only autobiographical record of Dust Bowl agriculture in existencewas first published in 1941. This new edition contains an introduction by the historian R. Douglas Hurt that not only objectively sets the scene during and after the Dust Bowl but also places the book properly in the growing body of contemporary literature on agriculture and land use. The volume is an important contribution to American agricultural history in general and the the history of the Depression and of the Great Plains in particular.
language: English
title: Farming the Dust Bowl: A First-Hand Account from Kansas
publisher: Univ Pr of Kansas