第一次世界大战与美国大平原尘暴区的形成

World War I and the Formation of the Dust Bowl in the U.S

第一次世界大战爆发后,美国为协约国供给粮食。战争给大平原农场主们提供了市场,巨大的需求促使半干旱地区得到了巨大的开发,而联邦政府和农场主并未意识到在大平原扩大生产所带来的生态风险。战争需求促进了大平原农业生产机械化发展的兴起,战争结束后,下跌的小麦价格迫使农场主们继续推广农业生产机械化并扩大生产规模,半干旱地区又得到了大面积开垦。总之,上述活动为20世纪30年代尘暴区的形成创造了条件。

After the outbreak of World War I,America began to supply grain for the Entente countries.World War I provided a big market for the farmers in the Great Plains,and the semiarid area was greatly developed due to the enormous and urgent demands,but the federal government and farmers did not realize that the ecological risks were involved in expanded production in the Great Plains.The war demand promoted the development of the mechanization of agricultural production in the Great Plains,and the drop in wheat price at the end of World War I forced farmers to continue to expand production scale with agricultural machines,leading to the reclamation of large areas of semiarid land.In a word,the above-mentioned activities created conditions for the formation of the Dust Bowl in the 1930s.