A quote from the link below:
TLDR: Too cold,dry, or alkaline for a start. Then desertification which they mean no organic matter etc.
"A young couple moves to NM from the East Coast (where it rains a lot), and buys 40 acres, hoping to live
a simple, sustainable life. They plow up the ground and break a bunch of equipment on rocks. They plant
corn and wait for the rain. It doesn’t rain, but the wind blows, carrying away tons or precious topsoil.
They decide to try raising livestock instead. They plant the barren field with grass seed, but the land
doesn’t produce enough grass to feed a single cow. They give up on ranching and decide to plant a small
garden, which they have just enough well water to irrigate. They add a bunch of lime and ash to the soil
(which works great in the acidic soils of the East), but this only makes their garden less productive
(because they just made an alkaline soil more alkaline). Finally, they ask their neighbor for advice. He
tells them that they are the third couple from out of state to waste their money and time on that
property. The couple gives up and moves away. Over time, native plants move back onto the land. Birds
nest in the shrubs and grasshoppers graze on the grass. Every once in a while, a pronghorn browses on a
shrub, or a hawk harvests a rodent from the land.
Before I launch into a discussion of New Mexico’s soils, I’ll pose this question: If a landscape doesn’t do
what we expect it to, is something wrong with the landscape, or is something wrong with our
expectations?"
This is one of those irritating links that wants to download a pdf file.
