Into Restoration:
The Dust Bowl

"There was nothing in the plains society to check the progress of commercial farming, nothing to prevent it from taking the risks it was willing to take for profit. That is how and why the Dust Bowl came about." – Donald Worster, from Introduction to the Dust Bowl, The Southern Plains in the 1930's










When initiating into the practice of restoration, there comes a moment when it dawns on you that virtually all natural resources are in some way or another a part of the sequence of a restoration process.  In order to get a more accurate assessment of nature as restoration, it seems 'natural' then to always hold a few markers of mind in place – one being the question 'what happened here previously,' 'what is happening now,' and 'how can we attempt a restoration?' The second two questions are good fodder for scientist restorationists, because they have to be able to come to understand the disturbance from which resource sprouted (or died out). To see forward, although aesthetics and future land usage can certainly contribute, is another great mode for the scientist, as she decides on what native regime might take hold now and thrive in a future of changing climate conditions.  There has to be some experiment in this and some hope and maybe a dash of acceptance that plans, when encountered by the first of nature itself, might not produce anticipated results.

The first question, however, 'what happened here before,' is good material for anybody to take a look at.  History is the great platform for all and of all. Even though we are often lead down the path of the warrior, the famous, or the pioneer, the closer truth is that history is movement of everybody in time during a particular period.  To name the cause of the Dustbowl – what Worster points out as one of the three worst ecological tragedies created by man in known history – as just one thing is not likely because it calls into question not just the machine on the farm, or just the greedy capitalist, or just the westward expansion of peoples across the continent, but all of these, plus more. If we think about any period of human history in which there is mass movement from one place to another, without the intricacy of regulations and safeguards, we can assume there will be trouble for both people and for land.  As masses of people came to the plains to stake claims on formerly pristine and productive land, those plots would have looked like a eureka, the potential for gold of a kind that would provide profits and sustenance of cared for properly.

Was it then the very idea of expansion and desire for the eureka of the plains land that was the cause of the dustbowl consequence? "Every society has within it, of course, contradictory values, and America has been no exception. The white pioneers who first came to the southern plains did bring with them religious ideas, family institutions, and other social traditions that opposed or moderated (or reinforced) this economic ethos. But in their behavior toward the land, capitalism was the major defining influence." The pioneer came as a seeker, then as a finder, and, as Worster says, eventually businessman.  This natural motion towards gain, profit, and land as commodity, not only led to the dustbowl, but very much has led then to a modern need for a restoration ethos. As the expansion has died out in some ways because of sheer lack of land to grab, so too have the processes of big ag shown that soil, although obviously resilient, is too organic, living, and must be tended to in ways other than perpetual tillage, hauling, and laid with chemicals.  Unlike the rush toward the Dust Bowl, the rush toward its restoration doesn't have the same numbers, or the same enthusiastic response in undertaking. As the scientist stands in the middle of the restored prairie, the question has to arise how to turn the gleam of gain onto restoration? One can see the hopeful seeds of restoration as business, to get to stakeholders into the market, so that labor is available. To provide some secure incentive and loan apparatus to farmers of concerns that are far larger than they would even choose, to transition small without the fear of total loss, seems a very interesting potential business model. The scaling back seems a vital and interesting way to engage in restoration not only with land but the economic system itself. Natural Capitalism is itself a restoration project.