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Dust Storms Return to the Midwest [1]
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Date: 2025-07-02
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Keep It Rural, an email newsletter from the Daily Yonder. Like what you see? Join the mailing list for more rural news, thoughts, and analysis in your inbox each week.
In mid-May of 2025, an enormous cloud filled the horizon outside of Bloomington, Illinois, menacing in both scope and color. Its rusty tint was akin to the orange skies of wildfire season in the American West, but this was not fire, it was dust.
The dust storm – sometimes called a “haboob” – was driven by strong winds that picked up loose soil from nearby farmland and sent it flying across northern Illinois, northern Indiana, and into Chicago.
It was one of a growing number of dust storms affecting places less accustomed to such storms. The storms are more common in dry places with high winds, like the Southwest, but increased drought conditions and unhealthy soils have broadened their reach.
This isn’t the first time the U.S. has experienced dust: the infamous Dust Bowl of the 1930s was a period of extreme dust storms throughout the Great Plains and poverty for many Americans. John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath paints a grim picture of life in such conditions: “Houses were shut tight and cloth wedged around doors and windows, but the dust came in so thinly that it could not be seen in the air, and it settled like pollen on the chairs and tables, on the dishes,” he wrote.
Breathing this dusty air can cause major respiratory problems like valley fever, a fungal infection that can lead to pneumonia and in some instances, death. An estimated 7,000 people died during the Dust Bowl from dust-induced pneumonia, and millions more suffered from the poor economic conditions such storms brought to the Plains states. America’s unemployment rate peaked at 25% during this difficult decade.
But from these challenges came several “New Deal” programs that Americans still benefit from.
One was the Soil Erosion Service that recognized industrial agriculture’s heavy footprint on the land and tried to address it. Constant tilling had stripped large swaths of farmland of its topsoil, which is what keeps soil intact and prevents it from blowing away. The Soil Erosion Service provided education to landowners on how to minimize topsoil loss, and utilized labor programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps (a New Deal program made to combat the Great Depression’s unemployment rates) to implement demonstration projects for healthier soil practices.
Overall, the service was successful, decreasing the number of dust storms and paving the way for what’s now called the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).
NRCS is managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (UDSA) and provides grants to farmers looking to implement more environmentally-friendly practices on their land, like ones that reduce soil erosion. The agency has provided almost 100 years of service to American farmers and the public, which benefits from cleaner air, land, and water.
An influx of money from the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act to NRCS grant programs helped get more farmers approved for sustainability projects, according to a report from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. But a freeze on grant-spending as part of a larger cost-cutting endeavor by the Trump administration has threatened the momentum of NRCS grants.
Americans stand to lose a lot from these cuts. The Great Depression was one of America’s lowest moments, a decade where poor soil health almost decimated a whole section of the country. Dust storms were a near constant reminder of the hardships of this era, as they threatened people’s health and wellbeing, not just their pocketbooks.
The creation of the Soil Erosion Service, and later NRCS, was how the government chose to invest in its people, recognizing how human health is inextricably tied to the land. Most Americans have never experienced a dust storm thanks to these investments, until now.
History has a way of repeating itself, particularly for those who forget how progress is made. The recent rise in dust storms is a warning of what could come to the U.S., if we choose to listen.
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