# A new agricultural frontier in Canada and Russia

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2021-07-25

agriculture, canada, climate, climate-change, environment, financial-times, food, niagara-wine, niagara-wine-region, russia

---

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/3505919d0bbb22dfcc3051a7060b16da.png)

Last year over the holidays, I attended a virtual wine tasting event that was put on by one of our partners. It was with a vineyard / winemaker in Spain and so it was evening for us and some ungodly hour for him.

At the end of the tasting -- which was exceptional, by the way -- I asked him what he thought about the Niagara region. Some of you may know that I love to support local Ontario wines. His response was hilarious and something along the lines of: "When we think of Niagara wines, we think of a part of the world that shouldn't produce wine but somehow does."

Ouch.

This was maybe the case before. But I think the region, vines, and industry have all matured. We also have some exceptional winemakers, some of which have come from the Old World because our startup-y wine region affords them far more creative freedom.

But you might also argue that things are changing because our climate is changing. The Financial Times recently published [an interesting "big read"](https://www.ft.com/content/977fac14-49e0-4497-a435-6581e5792201) about how agricultural production and crop types are shifting around the world in the face of climate temperatures.

It turns out that wine grapes are a pretty good leading indicator. A canary in the coal mine if you will. Because climate matters a great deal if you're trying to make exceptional wines. And if you've been harvesting a particular thing at a certain time for the last 5 decades and you're now doing it several weeks earlier, it might be a sign that something is changing.

It also turns out that two countries, in particular, stand to disproportionately benefit from this shifting agricultural landscape: Canada and Russia. As temperatures change, a new agricultural frontier is going to be created. And [it is expected](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0228305) that more than 50% of this land will be in these two countries. See image at the top of this post.

Of course, there's a flipside to this change. Countries on the other end of the spectrum with marginal growing climates and/or low production yields, could be severely impacted by higher temperatures. So perhaps it is a good idea to stay on top of what's happening in the world of wine. Might I recommend something from Niagara?

_Image:_ [_FT_](https://www.ft.com/content/977fac14-49e0-4497-a435-6581e5792201)

---

*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/a-new-agricultural-frontier-in-canada-and-russia)*