"Pastures of Plenty" is a 1941 composition by Woody Guthrie. Describing the travails and dignity of migrant workers in North America, it is evocative of the world described in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. The tune is based on the ballad "Pretty Polly",[1][2] a traditional English-language folk song from the British Isles that was also well known in the Appalachian region of North America.
The phrase is used in a different context in the song "Talking Vietnam Pot-Luck Blues" by Tom Paxton.
The line "we come with the dust and we go with the wind" reappears as "that come with the dust and are gone with the wind" in Bob Dylan's "Song to Woody".
The song is referenced in Phil Ochs's "Bound for Glory" in the lyric, "And it's "Pastures of Plenty" wrote the dustbowl balladeer."
