RED DEER – Prairie farmers might not have to worry about climate change turning their fields into dust bowls, but that doesn’t mean they won’t see changes that affect what they can grow.
Susan Robertson of the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa wants to remove some of the guess work.
She is using 50 years of weather observations and crop-related data to predict how climate change will affect land use on the Prairies.
Robertson, a senior program officer for the centre, said climate change is not expected to have a dramatic impact on Canadian farmers.
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Current models project slight changes or none at all.
“Out of the global win-lose for climate change, Canada is not likely to be a loser, according to current analysis,” Robertson told a recent Alberta Agricultural Economics Association meeting in Red Deer.
“I hope to be able to show the change in the spatial ranges for the different crops under climate change,” she added in a later interview.
For example, crops grown mostly in the south could flourish farther north in later decades.
“We don’t know what the demand for agricultural output is going to be,” she said. “But if we don’t know what our agricultural output capacity is, it’s really hard to plan for the future. This kind of modelling will allow us to have some glimpse into what our potential will be.”
The project, which she expects to complete soon, may provide a view of the future that is dramatically different from the present.
“We’re cruising along on the basis that we’re a great wheat-producing region, for example. But maybe that’s not going to be true,” she said.
“Then if it’s not true, then we have to make some major planning changes on how we manage the land base.”
Governments may have to change their agricultural support programs, and farmers may need to grow different crops to provide reasonable farm incomes.
It is too early to draw conclusions from the data that has been gathered, but Robertson is confident the project will provide a useful map for the future once complete.
She expects to be able to pick winners among existing crop varieties, although not all the answers will be provided.
For example, the modelling is based on today’s main crops and doesn’t consider crops such as soybeans, corn or peas that may be introduced if growing conditions change.
Robertson is examining four scenarios ranging from a worst-case prediction to a scenario in which no climate change occurs.
Two other models make predictions based on a world where solutions are found to control greenhouse gases and where maximum effort is made using the best possible technology.
