As cash crops and plantations dominate the best land in conjunction with increasing population pressures, people are forced to cultivate more marginal areas not suited to agriculture, with decreasing fallow periods reducing soil fertility. The removal of vegetation for fuel also degrades the land by breaking the nutrient cycle and facilitating erosion and desertification. In other instances a lack of population is the problem as people migrate out leaving fewer people to maintain irrigation channels and fields and forced to collect wood from a narrower range.
Inequitable access to resources has meant that large rich landowners are able to have large herds to supply the beef demand from the west. In Brazil even if herds are inefficient, unprofitable and cause deforestation and degradation of the land, owners are still able to receive large returns through tax write offs and land speculation.
Range lands have highlighted the conflicts of development theory. On the one hand is the western ideal influenced by equilibrium theory and the need to manage nature in well defined systems. The belief that rangelands in arid areas are delicate and can only support a certain 'carrying capacity' determined largely by the level of technology. On the other is the belief that rangelands are resilient, with traditional methods of management responding opportunistically in a chaotic environment.