The story of the Dust Bowl is an American story, and it is also a grass-fed story. Facing a similar economic crisis we have to look to our fields and grasslands now and ask, what are we doing right? What lessons have today’s farmers learned and implemented, that today’s bankers did not? There was a convergence between agricultural and economic might in the late 1920’s that led to the concurrence of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. As unregulated trading and mortgage lending have once again led to a similar economic downfall, we are now forced to look at the past to glean a vision of our future and relearn forgotten solutions. As we ask today, “Will we wait in bread lines again?” may we also ask, “Will we meet dark dust clouds again?”

There may not be heavy dust clouds during this Recession, but the Grass-fed Party believes it is utterly important to look at the agricultural lessons of the Great Depression, so that we do not have to answer yes to the second question. Ulla and I both read a book recently, The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, that opened up this historical moment on the high plains vividly; we saw the whole of grass-fed causes played out in this time and place. Egan’s story, crafted from interviews with those who had survived what was called No Man’s Land, takes us through a relatively short span of time, when the High Plains went from buffalo grass and dense sod, to overgrazed cattle country, to golden wheat fields, to dust and sand, and finally to experimental conservation districts, pushed by the American Government to restore the drifting plains back to their nature. In this American story, grass and grass-fed come full-circle.

More than just a case for the preservation of grassland by managed grazing, this is a story of the ethos of ambition, self-sufficiency, cooperation, the individual, the American Dream, the balance of nature, the machine in agriculture, and of the human will. Egan’s book reveals the character of the grasslands themselves as well as the character of the people who came and plowed, and the cowboys who stayed on. Historical figures like Hugh Bennett, FDR, and a newspaper man who created a “Last Man’s Club” set new standards for both the character that defines the agricultural west and the agencies, such as the Soil Conservation Service, that work to keep the grasslands together.

I can honestly say that I would be willing to live through another Great Depression, but after reading The Worst Hard Time, I know that I would never wish for my people, my land, or my animals to suffer the terror of the Dust Bowl again. The breadlines are