Farmers should pay attention to stark warnings about the looming impacts of climate change and factor them into future business plans, says a Canadian climate expert whose family lost its southern Alberta farm during the 1930s drought.
Barry Smit, geography professor and occupant of the Canada Research Chair in Global Environmental Change at Ontario’s University of Guelph, said water shortage is a greater danger than warmer temperatures.
“The trouble with climate change is that it is not just about temperature,” he said. “Farmers can handle the variation of temperature change, but if they don’t have enough water, it is a huge problem.”
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He was commenting after Canadian scientists involved in an international study of the evidence and impacts of climate change told an Ottawa news conference that evidence of global warming and its erratic consequences is irrefutable.
“The things that were predicted a few years ago now are showing up,” said Paul Kovacs, executive director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction in London, Ont.
The report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued in Brussels, Belgium, suggested that in the short term rising temperatures will appear beneficial to agriculture in countries such as Canada. However, the longer-term prospects of global warming are more droughts, severe weather, spreading deserts and production volatility.
“We believe that for the medium term, the next 20 to 30 years, this is likely to have a benefit for agriculture in Canada with some increased productivity,” Linda Mortsch of the University of Waterloo’s faculty of environmental studies told the news conference.
“However, as it continues and escalates, it will be a negative.”
She said the long-term problems for food production include uncertain weather, water issues and an increase in pests that affect crops and livestock.
Smit, who attended the news conference but was not one of the scientists who researched and wrote the report, said the prediction that climate change could benefit agriculture in the short or medium term is made by people who see global warming as an issue of increased temperatures that extend the growing season and allow earlier seeding and germination.
However, he said that is too simplistic. Higher temperatures mean more evaporation, perhaps a short-term increase in prairie water supplies as mountain glaciers melt but eventually less water.
Smit said it is bad news for farmers who depend on irrigation for their production.
“Those who are irrigating are going to find huge demands on that water.”
He said climate volatility will put great pressure on provincial crop insurance finances and should lead farmers and their suppliers to consider their options.
“All interests on the ground in agriculture should wonder how this is likely to affect me,” he said.
“If I’m a farmer in an area that is not sensitive to drought, I carry on. But if I’m a producer where if I don’t get a certain amount of moisture I’m in trouble, then I have some choice to make.”
Smit said governments must think about alternatives for farmers, including those in the southern Prairies, who would suffer if water shortages become the norm.
“If you are government and it looks pretty certain there are going to be problems in these areas, rather than wait until there is another catastrophe when you have to bail out people, maybe you work toward some kind of an adjustment program,” he said.
Smit referred to the 1930s drought that drove his family off the farm.
“I think we should be aware that we are facing conditions like that,” he said. “The 1990s drought meteorologically was more severe than the 1930s drought.”
