Surely arable land isn’t the limiting factor.
There wouldn’t be enough water supply for the additional crops, let alone the additional people.
And if you’re going to propose nuclear desalination of seawater to provide it, pls calculate the waste heat involved.
MaryEFoo pegged the key factor: water.
I live in southern Montana in an area whose rainfall classifies it as desert. However, I’m in a river valley with great soil and subirrigation. My 55 acres can support about 40 head of cattle without purchasing any outside feed. That’s about 1.4 acres per cow.
My wife’s cousin lives about 3-1/2 hours from here. He has 40 sections of land (over 25,000 acres), and can only support about 200 head. That’s about 128 acres per cow.
What’s the difference in our land? Water. I can get three cuttings of alfalfa per year, planted on over half my property. He can only get one cutting, and only on the land right along the river. The remainder of my land grows lush native grass. The remainder of his land is mostly sagebrush.
Not to mention…not enough Arabs!
D&R
Saying that water is the key factor is highly misleading. The Amazon basin and the Pacific Northwest for example have plenty of water but are never going to be particularly productive, in one case primarily because of soil, in another because of temperature.
Water is one of the many factors that play a role in determining productivity that I mentioned in my previous posts. There is no justificstion for claiming it is the key factor.
Not very productive? Pacific Northwest is a veritable Garden of Eden WRT fruit (Apples/Pears/Grapes) wheat, hopps, onions…whatever you like. The Western half is a bit “marine” but pretty much all you have to do is get some of the non-irradiated water out of the Columbia or Snake rivers and make it hit the dirt and “presto” 300+ days of sunshine and high quality topsoil simply explode with food.
Anyways, I took the point to be that water is a limiting factor, not that it is the only factor.
Yes, there are many factors, and water is by no means the only one. It is, however, an extremely significant factor that everybody in the thread prior to MaryEFoo missed.
You list soil and weather as your top factors. You really think they’re more important than water? Good water and poor soil will build you better cropland (over time) than excellent soil with no water.
And I agree wholeheartedly with Inigo Montoya.