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With shitty climates. The surface area of optimal climate in the US is likely larger than that of all the countries you've named combined. What's optimal? For e
by canucktrash669 3mo ago
With shitty climates. The surface area of optimal climate in the US is likely larger than that of all the countries you've named combined. What's optimal? For example in Canada most farmed areas yield only one harvest per year. And most of the land is barren wasteland. You have some of it as well, but it's not the majority of the territory.
- wslh 3mo agoArgentina seems like a counterexample here: the Pampas are one of the world's major temperate agricultural regions.
- canucktrash669 3mo agoArgentina's arable land is just 27% of what the USA has. Fact-checking myself... the USA has more arable land than Canada, Australia and Argentina combined. Russia has a lot, but the USA has the most. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_arable_land_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_arable_la... Not sure where to find an aggregate growing days figure, but there's clearly less of them per arable surface area in Canada compared to the USA.
- wslh 3mo agoThe thread was about climate. US is 3.5x greater than Argentina.
- mc32 3mo agoNot per capita. Look, Japan (and S Korea, Taiwan, Switzerland, etc) have shit for natural resources yet they are not technologically retarded. They have a highly advanced economies and societies.
- wslh 3mo agoThis is drifting from the point. The thread was about the share of territory with optimal farming climate, not per-capita anything, and not whether resource-poor countries can be advanced.
- canucktrash669 3mo agoNot strictly about climate, also about surface area in optimal climate.
- boelboel 3mo agoHonestly if other countries did the same stuff as Argentina they'd probably be way worse off than Argentina as the country is still relatively wealthy. They were arguably too rich (and not populated enough with 4 million people in 1900) for a while making industry, especially export oriented industry, less viable sort of like dutch disease.
- amarant 3mo agoBrazil is pretty damn fertile, and nearly as large as the US though... If we're just talking about farmable land area, I'd be surprised if the US is larger than Brazil. Farmed land area is a different thing though. Not sure how what compares.
- j05ev1f3 3mo agoGeographic determinism is one of those theories that explains everything after the fact and predicts almost nothing
- canucktrash669 3mo agoYou could say that about any other determinism. Nevertheless, it's a huge factor in the wealth of nations and a pillar of geopolitics. It's also why we don't all speak german today... /s
- Windchaser 3mo agoMost of this isn't geographical determinism, though. The death of the indigenous americans (allowing settlers to come in and take over), the brain drain after WW2, the first modern democracy (even if the Constitution is a bit kludgy), etc., all not geographical determinism.