A new report from the Canadian Agriculture Policy Institute says farmers in Eastern Canada are benefitting from warmer and moister weather and increased carbon leading to higher yields.
But there is little change across the Prairies.
It says the government has put too much effort into reducing greenhouses gases and not enough into adaptation, such as crop varieties better suited to the warmth and controls of insects and diseases that increase under the warmer and wetter weather.
The warmth is also expanding the crop-growing area nortth and paves the way for new crops that need the additional warmth and moisture.
Climate change is hitting farmers hard in other parts of the world, meaning they will be wanting more food from Canada.
For Canada, surely climate change mitigation is less important than adaptation to climate
change- given the magnitude of observed and expected changes, and because food is a
fundamental, imminent, need that is highly sensitive to climatic conditions, and that is scarce in
the world, says the report prepared under the leadership of Al Mussell.
Consumption of other types of products in the economy- non-food goods and
services- can be traded off far more easily in reducing greenhouse grass emissions than can food, the report said.
Imagining a world in which the climate evolved to be less hospitable to farming, and in which were unprepared for it, presents an acute crisis and a troubling prospect, the report said.
“Opportunities for mitigation in agriculture should be focused where there is overlap with adaptation strategies and search for synergies, rather than leading with policies focused on mitigation at the exclusion of adaptation,” it said.