Article 1362 of talk.politics.soviet:
Path: orion.oac.uci.edu!balboa.eng.uci.edu!dlawyer
From: dlawyer@balboa.eng.uci.edu (David Lawyer)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.soviet
Subject: USSR overpopulated
Keywords: overpopulation, climate, agriculture
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Date: 10 Jan 90 17:46:51 GMT
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Reply-To: dlawyer@balboa.eng.uci.edu (David Lawyer)
Organization: University of California at Irvine.
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I tend to think that the USSR is overpopulated and that this is a major cause of food shortages in the USSR.  The area of the USSR is about 2 1/2 times that of Canada and the latitude is somewhat similar.  Canada has about 25 million people so on that basis the USSR should only have about 60 million.  It actually has about 300 million.

You may claim that there is a large chunk of Central Asia which is at a latitude south of the Canadian border.  But most of this is desert and large scale irrigation is causing the Aral sea (and even the Caspian) to shrink.  Without these large bodies of water, the climate will become harsher.  Also much of this territory is mountainous such as in Armenia, the Caucuses etc. and thus not suitable for much agriculture.

Northern latitudes get little sunlight and are cold.  Even when it is light 24 hours a day, the sun is at a low angle and the radiation per square meter of earth surface is quite low.  The amount of rainfall in much of the USSR tends to be low due to low evaporation from frozen seas and landscape.  The Westerlies from the Atlantic Ocean have already released much of their moisture by the time they reach the USSR.  Thus one should not expect much agricultural yield per hectare from such land.

There are, of course, examples of overpopulated countries that survive quite well by exporting high-technology to pay for food imports such as Japan.  The USSR can't seem to do this and the USA has lost much of its market share.  But since the USA is not as overpopulated as the USSR we have an agricultural surplus and don't need to export manufactured goods in order to obtain food.

			Dave Lawyer