Conversely, infertile soils inhospitable to agriculture are located in UDCs. These
countries have most of the dry land – inhospitable for agriculture – as the arabic
or jungle areas over old geologic shields, such as the South American, lacking
fertility due to the agricultural poverty of their soils, a result of the climate, with
scarce nutrients and high vulnerability to water erosion by intense rains and hostile
to man and cattle due to plagues and endemic epidemics. Whenever present in
developed countries, as is the case of the North American or Australian deserts,
the regions are today demographically completely emptied.