Perhaps the most important of these was the fact that the Great Plains were simply not that easy to farm using the technology that was then available. Rain was not very consistent. There were things like locust swarms. Even the ground was hard to plow because of how thick the roots of the prairie grasses were.
A second set of problems was connected to the fact that the Great Plains were far from the populated areas. There was very little wood on the Great Plains and it was hard to get any from the East. This meant people had to do things like living in sod houses. They had to do without much fuel and without many kinds of foods that were available in the East.
