Soil on land where trees have been cut down quickly erodes away, rendering it useless, so more land soon has to be cleared.

BBC: Lemur

The land was virtually useless and lacked paved roads, plumbing and electricity.

CNN: 'Protest with a proposal'

Typically this meant plowing money into commodities, land, and other scarce if useless things (such as fine art), on the assumption that investment vehicles definitively limited in supply would hold their value in the context of dollar weakness.

FORBES: Now We Know Where the Inflation Went