Resiliency of Prairie Agriculture to Climate Change

The Prairie Region, consisting of the provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, is a major agricultural region of Canada. Climate change will have a significant impact on its agriculture and through these changes on related industries in the region, as well as on other parts of Canada and rest of the world. This study is a synthesis of literature on various aspects of climate change--impacts, adaptation, and knowledge gaps for the Prairie Region. These impacts include potential to increase crop production through higher yields, improved livestock productivity, and higher income for producers through higher export sales. Agriculture may also expand to higher latitude areas that are currently not capable of sustaining such an activity. However, the dampening effect on the region would be through higher frequency of extreme events--droughts and floods. In spite of positive effect of climate change on the region, adaptation to climate change by producers will be virtually necessary. Producers are willing to adopt such measures, although there are major knowledge gaps in how climate change would affect and how one can adapt to it. Major uncertainties are carbon fertilization, ability of northern areas to sustain production with shifting ecozones, and impact of new pest and diseases, among others, which may affect the degree of resiliency of the prairie agriculture to climate change. This review concludes that the prairie agriculture is resilient except under prolong and intense extreme events and lack of adaptation to them.