Dust Bowl - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Long-term economic impact
In many regions, over 75% of the usable topsoil was blown away in the course of the storms from 1930 to 1940, but there was a high degree of variation in the degree to which the land was degraded. Aside from the short-term economic consequences caused by the mass migration of 2.5 million people out of the plains states, there were severe long-term economic consequences of the Dust Bowl.
There was wide variation in how different counties were affected economically by the prolonged drought. Land values were one way that the economic effects of the Dust Bowl persisted. By 1940, counties that had experienced the most significant levels of erosion were the ones that saw the greatest decline in land values. The per-acre value of farmland declined by 28% in high-erosion counties and 17% in medium-erosion counties, relative to land value changes in low-erosion counties.[22] Even counties that managed to retain the majority of their topsoil saw significant declines in land prices because of negative spillover effects from other dramatically affected areas. Even over the long-term, the full agricultural value of the land often failed to recover. In highly eroded areas, only 14% to 28% of the original agricultural cost of the land was recovered. In 2007 dollars, the decline of land values caused by the Dust Bowl was estimated to be $1.9 billion.[22]