Climate change’s threat to agriculture

Spring has sprung and young mens’ thoughts turn to … agriculture. Well, at least let’s hope that the young men and women who comprise the government of Manitoba brain trust are turning their thoughts in that direction.

Manitoba agriculture isn’t the economic powerhouse it once was, but in terms of traditional economic calculus it remains a significant contributor, accounting annually for more than $9 billion in exports. But the usual statistics don’t tell the full story.

Food is not quite like most other things we produce, many of which are non-essential or in time will be displaced by substitutes or changes in fashion. Food, and food security, like water, are essential for human life. In addition, as we shift alliances and seek to diversify our markets, food shops well.

Manitoba has the largest percentage of young farmers in Canada. Average farm size exceeds 1,000 acres, and although there are a number of viable smaller farms, large operations dominate the landscape. These are sophisticated, high tech operations. Witness the diversity of crops and the rapid adjustment to changing markets.

But the sector with its challenges. Fertilizer costs were rising even before the attack on Iran and its impact on oil supplies vital to fertilizer manufacture. And the new timed release fertilizers necessary to maximize plant uptake and limit environmental release are even more expensive. Similarly, fuel costs are rising and there is no plan for life after oil. Animal husbandry, a significant contributor to the sector, also faces rising cost of inputs

However, these are small potatoes compared to the ultimate challenge and threat — climate change.

The recent provincial budget had nothing new to say about climate change, a failing pointed out by several environmental organizations. And it is not apparent that our government even recognizes the threat let alone the urgency and magnitude of the required action.

An emergency is a situation wherein circumstances arise that if not addressed with dispatch will lead to disaster. What is already arising and accelerating is the effect of climate change. Extremes may well become the norm; extremes in the hydrologic cycle, extremes in temperature and storm activity. Agriculture is the one sector of Manitoba’s economy that’s on the front lines; climate extremes will hit the hardest here. If measures are not now started in train to adapt our agricultural infrastructure to the coming storm, a disaster may well result. An emergency for sure but nary a word in the recent provincial budget, nor from the collective mouth of our government to indicate any awareness at 450 Broadway.

There is of course a political divide to overcome. Most of agro Manitoba is not NDP country. Rural ridings are heavily weighted to conservative representation. But an emergency of this magnitude requires all hands on deck, all oars rowing in the same direction.

Just how big is the challenge? The nexus for climate change impacts is water. Global temperature rise is resulting in more moisture aloft, moved around by increasingly extreme and erratic atmospheric circulation. Droughts and floods will be more frequent and intense. Massive forest fires, extreme flood events in the southern and midwestern U.S., and a February start to the tornado season are some early indicators.

For agriculture, water is life. Too much or too little could spell disaster Much has been done to address too much. Southern Manitoba is a spider’s web of drains ranging from the large regional provincial and municipal trunk drains down to individual on-farm drainage, a significant amount of which is unrecorded. The system has grown without sufficient attention to its entirety, or to building a controlled versus a passive system. Downstream effects have received inadequate attention.

Just documenting the location and capacity of every drain, large and small will be a major undertaking in itself, but it will allow for the determination of what more will be required to accomodate a changed and less predictable hydrologic regime, and for the installation of controls for real time routing or retention of extreme flows. Current AI is the ideal means to achieve this vision of system management.

Much less has been done to address too little. There is some but not extensive irrigation, and not much storage capacity to accomodate significant increase. Not that conversion to irrigation is a solution to drought, but it can’t be overlooked as one component to “drought proofing.” This is the phrase used for the efforts of the federal PFRA following the prolonged drought of the 1930s that resulted in the many “dugouts” that dot the landscape to this day. This was when farms were generally smaller and included livestock. Water retention in dry periods remains important to the livestock industry as well.

All of this is to say that Manitoba agriculture faces a looming crisis; that addressing it will require billions of dollars and unprecedented national and local political cooperation; that it will take several years to complete so that action is required now.

Step one is recognition. How about public dialogue involving all provincial political parties, civil society, the agricultural community and the federal government? Time for our elected government to step up.