As the NWT warms, is more commercial agriculture the right move?

With climate change impacting the landscape in dramatic ways, some researchers are looking at what that might mean for the NWT’s agricultural potential – and the role commercial agriculture could play in northern food security.

A new study explores how warming climate conditions could make agricultural expansion possible in the southern NWT. By looking at projected growing days, drought and soil conditions, they found growing crops in this area could be profitable within the “near” future – meaning 2036 to 2065.

Much of the NWT’s modest agriculture industry was centred around Hay River until areas south of the community were devastated by flooding in 2022 and wildfires in 2023.

“The wildfires really decimated a lot of the land,” said Janet Dean, executive director of the Territorial Agrifood Association. “Particularly in the South Slave, it really limited the growth of the sector and, in some cases, caused severe damage to some of the really most successful businesses that we had in agriculture.”

Access to land has remained an issue for aspiring farmers, Dean said. Low water levels in Hay River over the past few years also pose a challenge. “Agriculture everywhere is dependent on weather and climate,” Dean said.

A lot of farmers are monitoring how climate change is going to impact them in the near future, but also in the longer term, Dean said. “The changing weather patterns mean we’re going to be able to grow crops with longer growing seasons, and that will change things.”  

University of Saskatchewan researchers Lina Wu and David Natcher led the recent study, which looked at 4.3 million hectares of surveyed land including the Liard-Mackenzie, Upper Mackenzie, Hay River Valley and Slave River Lowland areas. 

“Our results show that future climates could support a wider range of crops in the Northwest Territories, including those crops with longer maturity periods,” Wu said.

Wu’s analysis found that canola, flaxseed and lentils were the most profitable crops, and that under certain scenarios, conventional agriculture in the NWT could produce around $600 million in revenue – two million tons of food – in both the near and “far” (2071 to 2100) future. 

That doesn’t mean converting all suitable land into farmland, Wu said.

The environmental and social impacts of any agricultural expansion need to be considered. So does the infrastructure required, like roads and storage facilities, and the effect on traditional local food systems.

“Our research provides the evidence that if, in the future, the government wants to develop conventional agriculture there, we can choose some beneficial [crops],” Wu said.

Both the federal and territorial governments seem keen on developing agriculture in the North. The federal government recently launched a new National Food Security Strategy, which includes $100 million over seven years to expand local food production in rural and northern communities. 

Over email, a representative from the territorial government’s Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment said the GNWT supports the agricultural sector through the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, which funds projects including those for commercial agriculture and agri-food capacity building. The GNWT declined to be interviewed for this article but provided a written statement. 

Natcher is part of the Arctic Council Sustainable Development Working Group, which funded the study along with Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, or Cirnac.

Cirnac also declined to be interviewed, responding by email that “on the topic of research and agricultural production potential in the NWT … the NWT Government would be best positioned to answer your questions.” 

‘Old ways don’t help’

Expanding agriculture into northern regions “sounds wonderful” on its face, Natcher said, but the implications need to be understood.

For example, he said, how might energy demands change if that happens?

“Would we also have a negative impact on availability of water resources,” he asked, “and would you be converting productive lands that are used for hunting, fishing, gathering by Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous peoples, and converting that to agriculture?”  

Jesse Cardinal – executive director of Keepers of the Water, an Indigenous-led water protection group focused on Alberta and the NWT – emphasizes the need to include Indigenous knowledge in any decisions being made, and to consider the species that might be impacted by agricultural growth.

“Those conversations need to happen at the community level,” Cardinal said.

“Where are these scientists looking at this potential agriculture to happen? Is it in areas where there’s medicines and berries?”

In Alberta, the more farmland that gets taken, the less land First Nations have, Cardinal said. “So you’re going to see a lot of issues of traditional land use come to the forefront.”

Water use is another huge consideration, Cardinal added, describing industrial farming in areas of drought as “very unsustainable.”

“That’s why you need Indigenous people in these conversations,” said Cardinal. “They will say, ‘this is what’s actually sustainable for this region,’ because they consider all of the land uses, not just commercial land use.

“We need to get out of this corporate model where a corporation comes in and they do what suits them best … using all of the water, the land, and then turning around and selling what they make at extremely high prices to the communities.

“The old ways of doing business don’t help the communities. What Indigenous people want, all across Canada, they want to own these projects.”

Questions to work out

Andrew Spring is an assistant professor at Wilfrid Laurier University and Canada Research Chair in northern sustainable food systems. He’s been working with communities in the NWT for about 13 years on adapting their food systems to climate change.

Community growing and commercial agriculture are “always pitted against each other,” he said. “Like, you can either do this or you can do this.”

For him, “the solution is you need a little bit of both.”

Growing food is often about food sovereignty, making sure communities have food available to everybody who needs it. Some of these projects, including a community garden in Kakisa, have been highly successful.

“The problem is, a lot of that revolves around the soft money or project money to put into it,” Spring said. “So there’s always this financial aspect to it. We have to get creative in how we fund these things. And currently, we don’t really have a long-term solution for that.

“What we need to start to do is think a little bit differently about how an ag system is going to work.”

There are a lot of pieces to the puzzle, he said, and a lot of things to be worked out.

For example, if food is being trucked thousands of kilometres to get to the Northwest Territories, can we grow food in the North to offset some of that carbon cost?

With comprehensive land claims being negotiated or planned, what role will Indigenous voices have as future landowners?

How can communities have enough food production to make fresh food available, and where can they store it?

And how can we create the circumstances in which people who have the skills and desire to make a living as a food producer are able to do so?

“These are all the questions that we need to think through before this larger-scale development happens,” Spring said. 

“When I say larger-scale, I don’t think anybody envisions huge monocultures of wheat … but what scale can we have to feed 50,000 people?”  

End of the chain

What agriculture the NWT did have is still growing back since the 2022 floods and 2023 wildfires, Dean said.

“We’re coming back from that. We see there are a lot more market gardeners starting, which is the first step up into commercial agriculture, and we are seeing a lot of interest in the communities to do their own community food production,” she said.

As that work progresses, Dean says a question that will hold back the sector – “because we haven’t got the answer” – is whether there is a place for commercial agriculture in the NWT, or whether the focus should be on communities growing their own food.

She thinks that certain types of agriculture, like feedlots, probably aren’t in our near future. “They have a huge environmental toll, and you really need a lot of infrastructure to support them.”

For example, she said, there are no livestock vets in the North. There also aren’t policies that allow growing and processing meat on farms for commercial sale.

“But we need to feed people,” Dean said.

“Personally, I think there is a place for larger-scale in-ground growing or larger-scale controlled-environment agriculture, so we can get enough food that we can ship it within the borders of the NWT – and not just rely on being at the end of the supply chain.”