NY Times Article

I had the opportunity to attend the Northern Ontario Regional Food Summit in Sudbury on Sept. 30/2011. While there, I had the pleasure of hearing the mayor of the Township of Black River-Matheson in Northern Ontario, Mike Millinkovich speak on his area. While there, he referenced this article from the New York Times. I now paste this so that those interested can read it.

December 5, 2006, 11:04 am
America’s Breadbasket Moves to Canada?
By TOM ZELLER JR.
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, 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 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, in its pre-coverage of the conference, that the rising temperatures
will, of course, have an impact not just on poor countries, but also open up parts of North
America and Russia to wheat production that are currently too cold — including Alaska and
Siberia. Indeed, a map based on research by Cimmyt, 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.
Via BBC News.
Christopher Mims at the Scientific American blog noted yesterday that this would put America’s
breadbasket squarely north of the border, and asked “if that’s what will happen to wheat, what’s
going to happen to other key crops, like soybeans and corne