With summers getting hotter and with a haze of wildfire smoke appearing to settle over Metro Vancouver every August, the effects of climate change are becoming increasingly obvious.
One sector seeing direct impacts of this change is agriculture and, to address these effects, the provincial and federal governments have agreed to provide $6 million to help build “resilience to climate change at the farm level.”
KPU’s Kent Mullinix (File Photo Richmond News)
Announced last week, the Climate Change Adaptation Program will establish regional strategies, provide support for new projects and fund research projects on B.C. farms.
While this is a good start, for Kent Mullinix, director of Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Institute for Sustainable Food Systems, adaptation may not go far enough.
“It’s good that the government wants to invest in an agriculture food system sector that can adapt to climate change,” he said. “I hope the support extends to mitigation, in addition to adaptation.”
Mullinix explained that the agriculture sector has an opportunity to reduce carbon emissions and that this should be encouraged.
“Climate change is here and we know that the impacts of it are going to be increasingly evident because we haven’t engaged in mitigation until now,” he said. “How we farm has a significant impact in contributing greenhouse gases…we absolutely need farmers to be sequestering carbon.”
To qualify for funding under the Farm Adaptation Innovator Program, the projects must be able to be used at the farm-level, by an individual farm operator and fall under categories of soil and crop management, livestock and pasture management, water management or whole farm and business management.
For example, a former research project that received funding was one that looked at the rise in pests that thrive in hotter, drier climates, how these affect potato crops and how they can be managed as average temperatures rise.
Packages to apply for funding under the new program will be available this fall.
"The B.C. government is committed to helping British Columbia farmers adapt to climate change through sustainable operations while expanding production,” said provincial agriculture minister, Lana Popham in a statement.
“The Climate Change Adaptation Program will directly support our farmers in regions throughout B.C. so they can reach new levels of success over the next five years."
As the adaptation program moves ahead, Mullinix said he hopes the significance of how climate change will affect society sinks in.
“People need to understand how very, very important this is. Climate change is real and it…will radically alter how we live and how we do things,” said Mullinix.
“We have to adapt to (climate change) but, by golly, we cannot exacerbate it anymore.”
KPU’s Kent Mullinix (File Photo Richmond News)
