PREVIOUS WORK
(Canada
in a Changing Climate)
"Global climatic changes
will in all likelihood result in both positive and negative impacts on Canadian
agriculture.”
In their summary of Canadian research as part of the Canada
Country Study, Brklacich et al. stated that climate change will have a wide
range of impacts on agriculture in Canada. Most regions of the country
are expected to experience warmer conditions, longer frost-free seasons and
increased evapotranspiration. The actual
impacts of these changes on agricultural operations, however, will vary
depending on factors such as precipitation changes, soil conditions and land
use. In general, northern agricultural regions are expected to benefit most
from longer and warmer frost-free seasons. Some northern locations (e.g., Peace
River region of Alberta and British Columbia, and parts of northern Ontario and
Quebec) may also experience new opportunities for cultivation, although the
benefits will likely be restricted to areas south of latitude 60°N for the next
several decades. Poor soil conditions will be a major factor limiting the
northward expansion of agricultural crops. In southern Ontario
and Quebec,
warmer conditions may increase the potential for the growth of specialty crops,
such as apples.
In many cases, the positive and negative impacts of climate
change would tend to offset each other. For
instance, the positive impacts of warmer temperatures and enhanced CO2 on crop
growth are expected to largely offset the negative impacts of increased moisture
stress and accelerated crop maturation time.
It should be noted that these predictions are characterized by a high
degree of uncertainty and do not include potential changes in pest and pathogen
outbreaks (e.g., warmer winters may increase grasshopper infestations in the
Prairies), nor do they consider the potential impacts of agricultural land fragmentation.
Agricultural adaptation to climate change was considered a
relatively new field of study at the time of the Canada Country Study. The
majority of adaptation research focused on identifying adaptation options and
assessing their feasibility. These studies were mainly technical in nature, and
did not consider economic practicalities or the capacity of producers to
undertake the adaptation. To address this, Brklacich et al.recommended
increasing the farming community’s involvement in adaptation research.
