Elsewhere in the lowland, sand deposits have piled up and made the soil useless for cultivation.
The Awacs sitting on the tarmac at Manta are useless over Colombian soil; the jungle canopy effectively renders them blind for spotting small aircraft, Colonel Leonard explained.
People opened the bags only to find spoiled food and soiled, useless clothing.
Nowadays, environmental pollution from heavy metals has raised great concern, because polluted soil is often useless for agriculture and poses a major threat to living organisms.
There's a marvellous sequence when Albert and Joey transform an apparently useless stretch of stony land into a fertile field, the plough turning up the dark, waxy soil like a series of images from a Seamus Heaney poem.
Readers were specific too: Hydroponics will drive food prices and availability in a world where most of soil will be rendered useless.
The roots tend to be weak, though, and are nearly useless for absorbing nutrients from the soil.
The cerrado itself was once deemed useless for farming.And some of this extra land is offset by soil erosion.
Where additional land was being brought into cultivation, or existing land cultivated more intensively, the soil may have become exhausted and useless.
It is very likely that about 30 percent of land in Bangladesh will frequently be underwater and the soil will be saturated with salt and useless.
Fertile (not potent) soil is tilled, and land that lies fallow is useless or barren, like a woman unable to conceive a child.
