Unfortunately, the world has come to take the Prairies and other breadbaskets for granted and to unthinkingly demand more and more of them—to feed growing populations and supply unwise biofuel schemes. But limits on fossil fuel and fertilizer inputs, the growing need to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions, and, most of all, impending climate impacts mean that we must not be blasé about continued profusions of cheap and plentiful farm products. Unless we take wise, ambitious, and rapid steps, in the coming decades many parts of the world may be breadbaskets no more. Crop production tonnage continues to rise in Canada, so much of what follows is prospective—it describes certain negative scenarios possible in the future. These negative scenarios become more likely as we continue to emit GHGs and further destabilize the global climate. What follows outlines some of those negative scenarios. Simply stated, climate change could devastate Canadian agriculture and food production in coming decades; a multi-decade drought could unfold and sear our food-producing areas, wither our crops, and parch and damage our soils. The Prairies, which host 84 per cent of Canadian farmland, could be the hardest hit, potentially getting much hotter and probably also drier.
It is increasingly likely that Earth will warm by a global average of nearly three degrees Celsius this century. Recently, the UK’s Guardian newspaper polled 400 UN IPCC climate scientists and most predicted temperature increases of 2.5 or three degrees Celsius this century. Similarly, the UN’s annual Emissions Gap Report tells us we are on track for 2.5 to 2.9 degrees of warming, even taking into account the already announced programs and actions to limit emissions. Forget 1.5 degrees; we’re on track for nearly double that. The preceding is bad news for everyone on Earth, but the news for most Canadian farmers is worse. The Canadian Prairies lie in the centre of a continent, at a relatively northerly latitude. Continental interiors are warming much faster than the global average; the same is true for northern areas. We are seeing the Prairies warm twice as fast as the global average rate and projections are that this will continue. So, this huge food-producing area is on track for five or six degrees of warming this century. Climate change may also bring more rain (or not), but if temperatures rise faster than rainfall, evaporation will overwhelm precipitation and soils will get drier, even if average precipitation rises. Moreover, averages don’t matter. A destabilized climate will bring more volatility—more protracted and intense extremes, including intense heatwaves and droughts alternating with damaging precipitation events. Even if multi-year “average” rainfall is near normal or increases, farmers might lose one year’s crop to drought and see the next year’s heavily damaged by relentless fall rains. Worse, a Prairie region five or six degrees hotter could become home to multi-year droughts.
These potential future climate impacts come atop massive risks already part of our long-term Prairie climate. University of Regina scientist Dr. Dave Sauchyn has demonstrated that the wettest, most benign period on the Prairies in the past 500+ years was the period after settlement, and that long multi-year droughts were more common before the 1900s (Sauchyn et al., 2002). That pre-1900 drought pattern could return. If it does, it will be made much worse by an additional five or six degrees of heat. Imagine the 1930s drought, but longer and hotter. Sauchyn and his co-authors note that “the immediate impacts of future global warming may be to return the prairie environment to past conditions in which persistent aridity was recorded for intervals of decades or longer.” He is talking about multi-year or multi-decade droughts. With five or six degrees of warming, some parts of the Prairies may become non-viable for crop production. There may be farmland abandonment or a forced return to grass. But potentially devastating climate impacts are just one of several converging risks, dysfunctions, and vulnerabilities that may be forming an agricultural polycrisis. Here is a tour of some of the others........read on https://www.