While not agreeing or disagreeing with your post, this part warranted I reply:
There is a huge amount of barely populated northern land, in Asia and North America: Russia and Canada, perhaps about to become usably arable.
This isn't really so for most, if not all crops.
The problem isn't the cold, it is growing season length, and sunlight, and shade.
I'm in southern Quebec, 300km from New York state. Some years, certain crops fail to reach maturity, as the growing season is shortened by too much rain / cloud cover. EG, old human editable yellow corn has a longer growing season than newer 2-colour/"peaches-n-cream" varieties, and sometimes never matures.
And in the spring/fall, the sun, even where I live, does not get far about the horizon, even at peak.
Many crops also cannot handle 24 hours of sun! Plants literally need rest cycles too.
So it is not only cold which restricts crop growth, but the length of sun per day.
Peat moss, and other such plants, do not need to produce large fruits or nuts to survive. And of course, our crops are picked for making the largest fruit/nuts, so require more time to be usable.
Stepping back from this issue, one thing of note.
Massive amounts of cropland is not used in southern Quebec, and other regions of Canada. Sometimes, it is not profitable to farm, and you can find lots of land sitting fallow.
Canada could easily double or even triple its crop output if food was more expensive.
I don't know how this applies to the rest of the world, but I do know that the EU does pay some farmers not to farm.
Outside of the economic realities, there is the fact that sometimes more tha 50% of Canada's wheat crop rots in silos.
This may seem horrifying, but is logical and sensible. Growing crops is not under our full control. Pests, drought, too much / not enough sun, means that there are bumper, and poor crop years.
You always want enough, or in the bad years people could starve.
Which leads to why the EU pays people not to farm, yet keep farmland. If conditions change, say some regions are at war, or have economic breakdowns, this fallow land comes into use, else again, we starve.
Anyhow, point is, warmer Earth doesn't mean cropland opens up.
> The problem isn't the cold, it is growing season length, and sunlight, and shade.
> So it is not only cold which restricts crop growth, but the length of sun per day.
> Anyhow, point is, warmer Earth doesn't mean cropland opens up.
Oh, surely it will help to at least some extent? Wheat, and even more so barley and rye, have been grown up to at least the middle of Finland and northern(ish) Sweden for hundreds of years. And those were the old not-so-refined varieties.
There is a huge amount of barely populated northern land, in Asia and North America: Russia and Canada, perhaps about to become usably arable.
This isn't really so for most, if not all crops.
The problem isn't the cold, it is growing season length, and sunlight, and shade.
I'm in southern Quebec, 300km from New York state. Some years, certain crops fail to reach maturity, as the growing season is shortened by too much rain / cloud cover. EG, old human editable yellow corn has a longer growing season than newer 2-colour/"peaches-n-cream" varieties, and sometimes never matures.
And in the spring/fall, the sun, even where I live, does not get far about the horizon, even at peak.
Many crops also cannot handle 24 hours of sun! Plants literally need rest cycles too.
So it is not only cold which restricts crop growth, but the length of sun per day.
Peat moss, and other such plants, do not need to produce large fruits or nuts to survive. And of course, our crops are picked for making the largest fruit/nuts, so require more time to be usable.
Stepping back from this issue, one thing of note.
Massive amounts of cropland is not used in southern Quebec, and other regions of Canada. Sometimes, it is not profitable to farm, and you can find lots of land sitting fallow.
Canada could easily double or even triple its crop output if food was more expensive.
I don't know how this applies to the rest of the world, but I do know that the EU does pay some farmers not to farm.
Outside of the economic realities, there is the fact that sometimes more tha 50% of Canada's wheat crop rots in silos.
This may seem horrifying, but is logical and sensible. Growing crops is not under our full control. Pests, drought, too much / not enough sun, means that there are bumper, and poor crop years.
You always want enough, or in the bad years people could starve.
Which leads to why the EU pays people not to farm, yet keep farmland. If conditions change, say some regions are at war, or have economic breakdowns, this fallow land comes into use, else again, we starve.
Anyhow, point is, warmer Earth doesn't mean cropland opens up.