Prof. Evan Fraser, the director of U of G’s Arrell Food Institute, appeared on CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks program this weekend to discuss his recent research on how climate change will affect global food production in the coming years.

Fraser is one of the co-authors of a new report that created a first-of-its-kind model of agricultural land predictions. That model predicts that as global temperatures rise, many forms of agriculture will have to move north, which could lead to environmental problems, including increased carbon emissions and degraded water quality.

“Our worry is that that will have huge environmental — and potentially social — impacts,” Fraser told the program.

He added that he and his fellow researchers believe that land in the North can be developed for agriculture in a sustainable way.

“By being more participatory and deliberative and putting northern communities at the centre, guided by principles of sustainable development, we can we can be much more proactive about how this this process can unfold… We can do this in a way that’s responsible,” he said.

Fraser holds the Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and studies food security, food prices, rural agricultural policy and how each is affected by climate change.