
What happened when American plains farmers, after a decade of black blizzards burying houses to the eaves in the 1930s, were paid by a new federal agency to plough along the contours and plant windbreak trees?
In April 1935, Congress created the Soil Conservation Service and began paying Great Plains farmers to plough along contours and plant windbreaks. Within seven years, roughly 220 million trees stood in a 1,150-mile shelterbelt from North Dakota to Texas — and the black blizzards began to fade.















