Food & Water featured

Fantasy Acres: Will Climate Change Actually Create More Northern Farmland?

March 20, 2023

Farms of the Future

The Ukraine war has shown us how volatile food prices can be. The rapidity with which the grain disruptions caused chaos, and led to the collapse of governments, was striking. A foreboding sign of things to come. Yet an agreement between Russia and Ukraine allowed the export of some of the region’s grain, helping alleviate the worst of the global crisis. The effects of climate change on food security, however, are not something we can negotiate our way out of.

Fires of Siberia

The Carbon Bomb

Should pioneering farmers brave the fires, risk their fields unceremoniously falling into a giant crater, and avoid aridification, there is another danger lurking in the black soils of Siberia. Cultivating the northern wastes would release a carbon bomb.

Teaser photo credit: Western Arctic National Parklands

Ben Shread-Hewitt

Ben is a Polycrisis researcher who studies the feedback loops between change in ecological, political, and economic systems. He currently works at the Climate Bonds Initiative, where he is building financial networks to drive forward climate action and combat fossil fuel proliferation.

He has an MSc in Sustainability, Planning, and Environmental Policy. Find him on TwitterLinkedIn, and Medium.

Tags: environmental effects of climate change, permafrost, Siberian wildfires