Comments by "Winston Smith" (@kryts27) on "Australia and the Millennium Drought" video.

  1. Essentially correct with another caveat; Australia's ancient soils are poor in nitrogen and phosphorus and sometimes acidic (strangely). Coupled with regular droughts makes inland farming in Australia a real food production challenge, even for experienced farmers. It's a dry continent with ancient depleted soils (only exceeded in dryness worldwide by Antarctica) with about 10 already named dryland deserts from West to East, South to North covering two thirds of the landmass which have only 3% of Australia's population within them. The deserts are not agriculturally useless; only marginal carrying capacity for dryland cattle and sheep ranching (which is contraversial because hard hoof animals like cattle and sheep damage the duricust and cause erosion).
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