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Agriculture in Saskatchewan: Dealing with a Changing Climate
What are some climate change impacts that are expected for agriculture?
- Longer growing seasons and higher temperatures mean moreoptions for different crop types.
- More frequent and extreme droughts mean increased risk of water shortages for livestock and farms, and water stress for pastures and crops.
- Decreased area and duration of snow-cover could lead to decreased quantity and quality of farm and community water supplies.
- Increased risk of insects and diseases, including new types, could mean greater challenges for managing crops.
- More frequent and longer heat waves could mean increased health problems for people and animals.
How can producers adapt to decrease the negative effects of climate change and increase the positive effects? Ideas include:
- Find out what climate changes are occurring now and estimate the effects.
- Find out more about future climate change trends (link with the climate change section) and their possible effects.
- Estimate how sensitive your operations are to these changes.
- Evaluate your options to determine which farm management practices work the best in a changing climate.
- Use water, energy, and soil conservation practices and other sustainable agricultural practices.
- Use improved safety procedures to prepare for and deal with extreme weather events such as wind storms, heat waves, tornados, dust storms, intense rain storms and floods.
- Work towards building a flexible and resilient agriculture management system that will be able to cope with change and surprise.
Where can I find out more?
- CCIARN Agriculture’s position paper
- Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation: A Canadian Perspective (Agriculture Chapter)
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability Report
- Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Synthesis Report
- Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative
- SaskAdapt
