NEWS: America's Breadbasket Moves to Canada? NYT Lede 12/05/06

[Guest guest]

Looks like ag researchers are starting to get serious about the effects

of climate change. Now if they could only put that together with peak

oil production, which makes it seem very unlikely that people in

Virginia will be able to afford eating British Columbia wheat in 2050.

 

Please check the link for map graphics and interesting commentary on

this article.

 

ys

hkdd

 

 

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/12/05/americas-breadbasket-moves-to-canad

a/

 

 

December 5, 2006, 11:04 am

 

 

America's Breadbasket Moves to Canada?

<http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/12/05/americas-breadbasket-moves-to-cana

da/>

 

By Tom Zeller Jr. <http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/author/tzeller/>

 

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Agriculture researchers say the time is now to develop crops --

including maize, wheat, rice and sorghum -- that can resist global

warming trends. (Photo: Cimmyt)

 

At its annual general meeting in Washington yesterday, the Consultative

Group on International Agricultural Research <http://www.cgiar.org/>,

the world's leading network of agricultural research centers, said the

steady march of global warming was driving the need to develop new crop

strains that can withstand rising temperatures, drier climates and

increased soil salt content, as well as "boosting agriculture's role in

removing greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere."

 

In a news release

<http://www.cgiar.org/newsroom/releases/news.asp?idnews=514> about the

meeting, the group explained:

 

The world's population is expected to increase by 3 billion people

by 2050. In a world where 75 percent of poor people depend on

agriculture, climate change will have a profound impact on their

food security.

 

Higher temperatures in Latin America, Asia, and Africa will shorten

growing seasons. Changes in rainfall patterns may lead to droughts

in some areas and to floods in others. Researchers have estimated

that a rise in temperature and change in rainfall could result in

losses amounting to as much as $2 billion a year through reduced

yields of important food crops such as maize. In other regions of

the South, farmers will face greater climate variability, including

more frequent and sustained intense weather events such as droughts,

floods, and typhoons.

 

BBC News noted on Sunday

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6200114.stm>, in its

pre-coverage of the conference, that the rising temperatures will, of

course, have an impact not just on poor countries, including opening up

parts of North America and Russia to wheat production that are currently

too cold -- including Alaska and Siberia. Indeed, a map

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6200114.stm#map> based on

research by Cimmyt <http://www.cimmyt.org/>, a nonprofit network of

global organizations working on food security and agricultural issues,

shows the belly of North America's wheat bounty shifting to Canada by 2050.

 

 

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/12/05/americas-breadbasket-moves-to-canad

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