New Report Examines Potential Risks and Opportunities Related to Climate Change for Agriculture

Farm Management Canada is pleased to announce the release of “Seeds of Change – Shifting Diets & Soil Carbon Sequestration Markets: How Climate Change is Driving New Opportunities and Risks in Agriculture”.

Climate Change is driving shifts in Canadian agriculture and food consumption at an increasingly rapid pace, introducing new opportunities and risks that were unanticipated just a few years ago. Traditional forecasting methods fail when the future looks nothing like the past. How best then, to manage risk when faced with this kind of uncertainty? Farm Management Canada’s Roots to Success project responded to this challenge by undertaking a foresight exercise focused on farms and ranches.

Weak signals or seeds of change are defined in foresight analysis as the first indicators of change that may become significant in the future.  Members of Farm Management Canada’s National Risk Management Roundtable participated in a horizon scan exercise that identified 8 weak signals driven by climate change. Two of these signals were identified as priorities by Roundtable members:

• Canadians are shifting their diet to include more fruit, vegetables and non-animal protein alternatives (for both health and environmental reasons); and
• Soil carbon sequestration markets will become an opportunity for the agriculture sector.

In the report, both priority signals were then used to build future scenarios that indicate potential outcomes should the signal become the norm. Resulting opportunities and risks to farmers and ranchers were then identified, along with recommendations for support strategies that Farm Management Canada, other similar organisations, and governments can provide.