"This iconic photo taken by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and now in the public domain shows a farm in Dallas, South Dakota on May 13, 1936 after a ""Dust Bowl"" storm covered soil and equipment in a layer of dust. After decades of teaching students that the era ended with new farming techniques in the 1940s, a study led by the University of Tennessee and University of Illinois has shown that soil quality actually continued to decline until the 1980s and even now isn't back to the level it was in the mid-1930s."
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