A new report from Farm Management Canada focuses on how farmers can respond and adapt to climate change and the effects it is having on industrial practices and the market for food. The report is titled Seeds of Change – Shifting Diets & Soil Carbon Sequestration Markets: How Climate Change is Driving New Opportunities and Risks in Agriculture.
Farm Management Canada is a national organization dedicated to the development of leading-edge resources, information, and tools to support farm business success.
The Seeds of Change report identifies how climate change is driving shifts in Canadian agriculture and food consumption at an increasingly rapid pace, which has led to the introduction of new opportunities and risks that were unanticipated just a few years ago. The report explains how traditional forecasting methods fail when the future looks nothing like the past and addresses how to manage risk when faced with uncertainty.
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 eight weak signals driven by climate change. Two of these signals were identified as priorities by roundtable members. They are; 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.
“These potential impacts, good or bad, should provide some insight to farmers and the industry at large about potential changes that could occur in the future, thereby allowing those who wish to act upon them to decide how to react,” said Farm Management Canada Program Manager Mathieu Lipari.
He said these future events are not guaranteed but changes are already being seen in the industry that are directly related to those signals.
“In a nutshell, it’s a foresight exercise that allows us to think about how the industry, government, organizations, or even individual farms could benefit from these events or protect the industry against potential negative consequences,” Lipari said.
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 organizations, and governments may provide.
The Seeds of Change report was written by Barefoot Consulting with the help of Farm Management Canada. Members of the National Risk Management Roundtable include representatives of the agricultural, financial, and government sectors. To read the entire report, go to https://fmc-gac.com/seeds-of-change/ .
