What could be worse than sharing a long border with hundreds of millions of ignorant, gun-crazed Americans? How about sharing a border with hundreds of millions of ignorant, gun-crazed, hungry Americans? Here’s an evocative map for you.
That’s how the primary wheat-growing region in North America will shift if global warming continues. Farming is one of those hot-button red state issues (it’s perfect: show family farms to reflect traditional values, while supporting the reality, which is the corporate megafarm), yet what we have here is red state denialism working to help destroy one of their props.
So, does this mean we’ll be able to grow mango, papaya, tamarind, and such in Tennessee? If so, I guess I need to start driving aimlessly around a bit more often.
Damn, man. That means I’ll have to move from just outside Toronto to friggin’ northern Quebec or something. I don’t wanna be a fur-trapper (he said as if there would be any wilderness left for animals to frolic in).
Note to self, buy land in the UP.
On the upside, like MJ Memphis, I’ll be looking forward to my banana plantation in Indiana. By the way, can’t we get better biofuel out of sugarcane than corn?
I believe it. And we won’t have to wait until 2050 for some of these major changes to take effect. Global climate change has been the denial issue of the decade.
As in, let’s pretend it isn’t happening and let’s pretend that we as human beings have had no negative impact on the situation which isn’t happening. I smell the politics of corporate whoredom.
Actually, there is already an issue where the U.S. is trying to grab stuff from Canada: water. The idea of water as a trade commodity is becoming bigger all the time, and the U.S. keeps expanding cities in places with limited water supplies.
There is already a big movement to have water fall under NAFTA rules. Plus, there are several large river diversion projects currently ongoing to increase the U.S. water supply at the expense of Canada and Mexico.
I think this will be a major issue before we start growing wheat on my parents’ land in the Canadian Shield.
Actually, GP’s last sentence highlights a major difficulty with this map: while the climate ZONES favoring wheat growth will shift, the actual soil types present in the region with the new zones are not obliged to help us out. Specifically, many of the regions in the future “wheat belt” have very thin soils (since much of that was scraped off by the Pleistocene glaciation and redistributed to what is now the contiguous U.S.). Indeed, most of the historically productive wheat belts are regions that have thick soil deposits in part by the outwash of glaciers.
We in the Great Lakes region of the US are also worried that they’ll be coming after a big chunk of the water that we share with you.
Hmmm. Global warming making the central US tropical fruit country and the Bushites’ attack on American civil liberties. Looks like their goal is to make you a literal banana republic.
If you come for our wheat, remember, we’ve beat you twice. A third time and we get to keep you.
Speaking for the rational part of the US population, we can only hope. On the other hand, on the evidence of your present government some of our lunacy has already spread northward. ;)
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Thomas, you’re right on the money concerning the soil types. The soil around my parents’ area is not really suitable for growing crops of any kind. Just a little further north there is a clay belt that will support more intensive agriculture, but it’s a very small area – it won’t be expanding any time soon.
Dear nonexistent God, Alaska? Even if the soil won’t support real farming up there, the idea that the climate in 50 years might is really disturbing.
I suspect that things will get worse before they get better. As some of the previous commentors wrote, the Canadian shield is not sitable for agriculture. It’s nice for conifers and lichen, but that’s about it. The other issue is of course water. Since about a third of the world’s population does not have regular access to clean drinking water, I reckon Canada with its large undefended borders and relatively small population (35 million) and the largest reserves of fresh water, will be the envy of many thirsty nations, not only the US. Already corporate interests are starting to vie for what was formerly taboo under NAFTA. Forces on both sides of the broder are working to undermine NAFTA withe respect to water, and our nouveau riche province of Alberta is trying to negotiate independant deals with coniguous states regarding the diversion of its water supplies. The irony of course is that most of our water is in the form of glacial run-off which under present climatalogial trends will disappear sometime in the future leaving little water for anyone.
To Steve LaBonne, the lunacy has indeed spread northward. In the last year the conservative government here has been gung ho regarding slashing taxes at the expenses of social programs and Kyoto. The only consolation is knowing that this is a minority government and that sooner or later (sooner now that the Liberal party has a new leader) it wil be toppled. The downside is that Canada has five official parties, four of which are left of centre (even the centrist Liberal party is left of the US Democrats). this issue then, is as always, vote splitting; the reason that last government got elected to office in the first place.
Heh. Like Americans could even Find Canada; 60% of high school graduates can’t locate their hometowns on a map. A friend of mine visited NASA and she said that on their world map, one of the dominant features was a long, straight beach along the 49th parallel, with the island of Alaska off to the left.
In reply to Mike, who said, “remember, we’ve beat you twice.”
Mike, don’t believe everything you learned in grade school history class. While we Canadians are fed the “we won the war of 1812” kool-aid, the truth is rather more complicated, including the fact that the Americans burned the entire city of Toronto (then York) to the ground. Most historians agree that, while both sides won important battles, both sides also won trivial battles, and neither side was a clear winner. In the end, the war just kind of ran out of steam and petered out wihtout actually resolving any of the issues that began it. Also, we weren’t even Canadians at the time anyway.
Oh, and what was the second time you mentioned?
I guess I should change jobs and start working on heat-tolerant wheat.
Better make sure it’s super drought-tolerant as well.
Time to lose the snow shovel PZ looks like there’s a farm in your future too!
Maybe we should switch to some alternative grain like amaranth or rice?
Jeremy,
Hail, Hail To Old Purdue!
All Hail To Our Old Gold And Black!
Hail, Hail To Old Purdue!
Etc….
Just a note about that map. Most of the areas shaded in blue are presently covered with forests. A large part of the area in blue is part of the Canadian Shield – composed mostly of Pre-Cambrian rocks. There is unlikely to be much soil here (check Canadian Shield at Wikipedia) as the shield was scraped bare of soil in the last ice age. The prospect of this area being good for agriculture seems unlikely.
Oh, come on, I’m sure the magical power of the market will make the Canadian Shield perfect for farming. It’s the market, after all.
So what you Canadians are saying is that if we Americans come up there hell-bent for wheat farming, we should bring our own soil?
*mentally calculating how many cubic yards–excuse me, meters–of topsoil I can cram into my Scion xB*
Stanton, rice is a no-go because it requires too much water. I think some form of millet might work, however.
Already working on it:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200507/s1411649.htm
Australian scientists have made a significant breakthrough in genetic research which could lead to the development of drought-resistant crops and save farmers hundreds of millions of dollars.
In research to be published in leading international journal Nature, the scientists from the Australian National University report that they have identified a gene which regulates water efficiency in plants.
It is the first time such a gene has been isolated and scientists say it will allow them improve the drought resistance of most crop species and could have major implications for crops grown in dry areas.
Brilliant,
So let’s fix our drought/climate change/overpopulation problem by creating genetically modified organisms rather than by changing the behaviour (CO2 emissions, large scale water diversion, f*cking like rabbits) that got us here in the first place. It’s like turning on the air conditioner in your car because the heater is on too high. Does anyone else see a problem with this?
Joshua,
When I visited Alaska in 1996 I was told that the previous year, for the first time, they had exported barley to the southern 48 states. Much of Alaska was not glaciated in the last ice age, so there is soil. My host’s residence, for example, sits on about 100m of loess.
So some farmland will be gained. But Northern Ontario, in
my limited experience, has only a thin layer of soil over rock,
and I expect that is true for at least half the of the Canadian blue zone, above.
On the other hand, might it be just as likely that we genetically engineer the wheat so that it continues to thrive in the conditions that would exist in the US in 2050?
Also, I would assume that corn would still be fine (since it was originally cultivated around Mexico City) with some minor modifications?
It’s ok. Most Merkins will die first in the tornados and hurricanes of the 30s and 40s.
So basically the ice age dumped all our good Canadian soil on the US, and now you’ve screwed up the global environment so you’re going to have to depend on the north for growing wheat?
The solution is clear – give us our damned mud back!
Ok, enough with the mud-slinging… :-)
Colin
Oh, and all our politicians die in the Great Flood of D.C. in 2015…
But, but, Michael Crichton said global warming is a lie and he’s a best selling author!
And hoody said so too, and trolls are so persuasive!
Your map really doesn’t show the danger in this.
More than 1/2 of the area you show as “viable for wheat in 2050” will never be viable for farming, no matter what happens to climate. As William Hyde has previously hinted at, all of Northern Ontario, Northern Quebec and Northern Manitoba encapsulated in that blue area on the map are on the Canadian Shield – a giant slab of almost bare rock. As Cannuk originally from Northern Ontario (Wawa and Thessalon), I can tell you with certainty that wheat will not grow there, even if the weather is right. Sudbury barely has enough soil for trees and if you have ever driven by, looks like the surface of the moon. On top of that, what little soil that is there is rocky, and highly acidic – most of this are is covered in dense pine forests, so even clearly the trees would leave soil unfit for growing anything by other pines for years.
I think the answer is for us Cannuks to buy more guns to protect ourselves from the starving, marauding hordes from the south.
I suspect that things will get worse before they get better. As some of the previous commentors wrote, the Canadian shield is not sitable for agriculture.
Whine, whine. If glacial wasteland was good enough for the Finnish farmers of old…
“In the beginning there was the bog, the hoe – and Jussi.”
(no, the other kind of hoe!)
Instead of clearing a bog, you might opt for a patch of forest instead. Slash-and-burn is an option, but that’s not going to help with the huge f*cking boulders you are likely to have laying around. Perhaps it’s a good idea to start clearing those rocks now before we run out of oil…
Mike, as you’re from Wawa and Thessalon you’re familiar with this, but for others – here’s a YouTube video taken on one of the highways in Northern Ontario. Lots of pine and rock cuts.
(Side note: Mike, my wife is from Wawa too. I’m from the other side, near the Quebec border.)
Not to worry, the Magic of the Market ™ will turn all that rock into lush farmland! If Julian Simon were still alive he’d explain it to you!
There’ll always be Soylent Green, so why worry?
Global warming may be good for Canada. Now you know why Harper isn’t a big fan of Kyoto. It also explains why Harper wants to arm our border guards and why we Canadians need to think about building a fence.
There’s a history in North America of poor people in hot countries moving north to look for a better life. We’ve got to put a stop to that before it’s too late.
Guns?! Try using all of that surplus Ontario deuterium for something other than counting solar neutrinos, rather…
Well, all I can say to our neighbors to the north is this: It’s never too early to start building a wall.
The whole idea of Canadian fresh water being an important global resource has a vaguely familiar ring to it. It was the central idea in an old comic book (Captain Canada??) that I remember from my mis-spent youth back in the 70’s.
Aren’t there any critical thinkers here? No one is asking three key questions: 1) What’s the worst case scenario for global warming over the next 43 years? 2) As part of 1), what’s the evidence that this worst case scenario is so dramatic that Arctic climates turn into farming climates. Conversely, 3) if there isn’t going to be a 20-degree shift, what’s the evidence that wheat is so sensitive to one or two degrees’ difference?
But amaranth is eeeeeevil. That’s why the Spanish conquistadors banned it, right? And if it’s religious, it has to be correct.
Hmmm – so (he thinks to himself), what will New Zealand and Australia be growing under these circumstances?
Phoenician, I’d imagine that NZ and Oz will be growing algae, for the most part.
Hmmm, maybe the tops of the northern volcanoes and the souther alps will still be above water, but everyone will be so consumed by figuring out what to do with the tribal foreshore ownership issue, in this time of changing coastlines, that everyone will have migrated to the UK. Only to find that that, too is gone.
Well, who needs wheat? I’m going to exploit the new and increasing maritime resources that will be available in the waters off the coast of Tennessee!
That view of Sudbury, ONT as little more than a stepping stone to the Moon might have been apropo 40 years ago (thanks to NASA’s moon bugging testing), but there have been significant strides made in re-foresting the region; a region shorn of its surrounding forests due to early ore smelting practices and acid rain (Sudbury being the epicenter of one of the largest nickel mining and processing operations in the world).
Having myself ventured on to some of these rehabilitated ‘private’ lands both the regrowth and return of animal species utterly contradicts the moonscape myth. Granted, the area remains an active mining zone so some swaths of landscape will always remain barren to all but the man made devices which strip it of green, but it’s not quite the obvious dead zone it once was.
Oh, and yes, I was born there.
New Zealand and Australia?
Not sure about New Zealand, but Australia won’t be growing much. It’ll be a salinated desert from sea to shining sea. Why do you think they’re already researching drought resistant crops?
Though it’ll still have plenty of coal and uranium to export, so they should be ok. Plenty of demand there.
The second time (well, it happened first, but it’s the one other than the War of 1812) the US was repelled in an invasion of what would one day be Canada was in 1775 during the Revolutionary War – Benedict Arnold was one of the leaders in an expedition that was defeated attempting to take Quebec City, but was defeated in the Battle of Quebec on December 31, 1775. Undeterred, and now commander in chief after his co-commander Montgomery’s death, Arnold besieged the city for a bit during the winter. The British were happy to let Arnold’s force fade away from cold and desertion. Arnold was forced to retreat in the spring of 1776 when British reinforcements arrived.
Yes. However – corn as it is farmed in America today is the one of the most fossil fuel intensive crops in the world. American corn will need to be grown with less water, in warmer weather, and with a lot less fossil-fuel derived fertilizer. There are strains which have all these properties, but those strains have lower per-acre yields. As I see it, all these issues can be solved, given enough time – it’s just a matter of developing solutions and applying them in a manner that matches the shifts in climate. As long as global heating occurs sufficiently slowly and predictably, there is a lot of work to do, but nothing to fear, other than total denial of the danger.
The same cannot be said for central Asia, which, as far as I know, will suffer the same fate, yet has much lesser technological resources, and is far more politically volatile. It seems likely to me that central Asia will face increasing religious fanaticism combined with increasing populations and decreasing crop yields. In or nearby central Asia, Russia, China, India, and Pakistan all have nuclear weapons.
In both cases, the rate at which global heating occurs will make a huge difference. This is an important item to remember with all of the ‘we can’t do anything about it anyway’ rhetoric going around. Carbon cuts will make a big difference in our lives, even though global heating will continue for some time after carbon cuts are achieved.
Actually, there’s a lot of wheat being grown right now in the so-called “Viable for Wheat in 2050” zone. And twenty years ago my uncle was on a team at the Experimental Farm in Ottawa that was specifically developing grains that could be grown on the Canadian Shield. I think triticale was one of theirs…but it was long ago, and the papyrus was lost.
Full disclosure: a significant battle of the War of 1812 was fought in my hometown.
A good (and accessible) book on this topic is The War of 1812: The War Both Sides Won. Among the things I learned: 1) The vast majority of the population of Upper Canada (Ontario) when the war broke out were immigrants from the Thirteen Colonies, most of whom weren’t Loyalists, but Americans who came some time after the Revolution looking for cheap and available land. The loyalty of almost 90% of the local population was in question by the English commanders (Luckily for them, the six states of New England opted out of the war, not wanting to suspend their trade with the Maritime colonies). 2) the nascent American navy accounted for itself very well in one-on-one confrontations with Royal Navy ships. It was a blow to the Royal Navy’s complacency that an upstart colony could match the victors of Trafalgar on the sea.
Mike might be referring to the Fenian Raids of 1866, when a bunch of Irish nationalists based in New England planned to capture Canada in the hopes of trading it to the English for Irish independence. Although the Fenians were not acting on behalf of or with the support of the US government or the US populace (who both had their own problems with the Reconstruction), the raids were part of the reason the colonies of British North America sought Confederation the following year (i.e., when Canada became a nation).
You must be thinking of Captain Canuck!
If any of you ever spend any winters on the northern edge of that blue zone you may come to realize, as I have, that global warming is not such a bad thing.
I believe that the latest and best projections indicate that the central part of Canada will lose most of its precipitation due to global warming. It may be warm enough to grow grain, but deserts aren’t known for growing much of anything.
Oh, so that’s how it works. I’m not good enough at history to identify the wars, but one of Sweden’s authors of pseudohistorical books has said that Sweden and Russia has fought over land 5 times. We won two, they won two, and one was a draw.
That means they would have needed only a battle before the USSR was dissolved. Yes, probably.
Oh, so that’s how it works. I’m not good enough at history to identify the wars, but one of Sweden’s authors of pseudohistorical books has said that Sweden and Russia has fought over land 5 times. We won two, they won two, and one was a draw.
That means they would have needed only a battle before the USSR was dissolved. Yes, probably.
the Americans burned the entire city of Toronto (then York) to the ground.
York was a city in name only, then. The main sreet at the time was described as “60 feet wide, 2 miles long and three feet deep” (a reference to the mud).
Forget about the water. Do you have any idea how much of it is fossil water? Get cracking on those desalinization plants, folks.
I’ve lived and worked on the alberta portion of that blue area. Huge tracts of that land is swampy pete known as muskeg. Here’s a wiki def: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muskeg. I used to survey for road construction and we had to, at times, dig up to 4 meters deep to get to the bedrock. You would have to some serious work to make the land up here arable for wheat.
Yes, but Pip, have you ever tried eating coal or uranium?
To clarify my previous comment: In other words, if the predictions for Himalayan glacier mass and tropical rainfall patterns are correct, south-east Asian countries will not have any spare food to trade for that coal or uranium.
Krakus:
Yes – just not enough of the US population.
Still, it’s remarkable how a crisis on your doorstep focuses the mind. Here in Oz (whose government has steadfastly denied the existence of anthropogenic climate change), meteorologists are currently predicting a sixth year of low rainfall in the Murray-Darling river basin, and pointing the finger at climate change. The Murray River only continues to flow because of releases from dams, which are already at record low levels. If the forecasts are correct, Australia’s longest river is likely to stop flowing either this year or next, and bang goes the 40% of Australia’s agriculture which depends upon it for irrigation.
Suddenly, people are talking about climate change a lot. Hopefully the same will happen in the USA before it’s too late.
PS. I do like your dill pickles ;-)
Oh come on now why worry so much? I’m sure we could divert most of the water from whats left of the great lakes to supply the mom and pop cockroach farms that will provide the food for the giant desert scorpion farms. Then we can export the scorpions to the Canadians who will serve them up in lieu of shrimp cocktails. Just a question of thinking outside the box and we can all continue to cool our houses with coal powered air conditioners. Heck I’m sure we could even come up with ways to run our SUVs with fuel produced from coal. As for me down here in Florida I’m going to start a floating solar desalinazation plant and begin exporting my new brand of 100% pure bottled “Eau Solar” to the nouveau riche scorpion farmers at 10 bucks a bottle. Any investors want to get in on a ground floor opportunity with me?
Russ,
There is lots of muskeg in Northern Ontario too. So add that to the list.
Gilliam,
Well its been about 4 or 5 years since I’ve been back that way and I judge on going though the bypass on 17 – not a whole lot of trees around the 144 turn off and on 17 toward Copper Cliff. And even though there are trees and vegetation now, its still closer to the Prairies or the tundra in the Arctic than to the lush forest you see going up the Montreal River Hill or up around Hawk Junction. Relative to these places it is the moon. And considering how long it took to get what little vegetation that is there now to grow (I worked around Sudbury, up near Cartier, past Onapping and Levack, in the summer of 1985 and planted a good manay of those trees), I hardly think that it will be a lush area for wheat production in even 50 years.
Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.: Right – and therein lies a problem. People have pointed out that global warming threatens food supplies, and this is one reason why.
And the water issue is a concern on other grounds than articulated – some of us are concerned about people buying it up and using it as a sword of Damocles, putting other places (further) into dire poverty.
Peter Barber,
You cheeky bugger! My namesake is more than just about pickles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakus
On a more serious note, I heard about your woes in OZ. Hope the Howard government takes things more seriously soon.
Ye gods, no. I’ve seen Lake Erie. No way I’d want to drink from it. :P