Is Australia A Portent for the Great Plains?

Agrimoney, via Big Picture Agriculture:

Australia's volatile climate, which experts warned will produce increasing weather extremes, has already contributed to a loss in farmland the size of Ukraine, a leading analyst warned.

Australia's Climate Commission warned earlier this week of a high risk that the heatwaves, drought, wild fires and cyclones which have reached at least part of the country over the past few months will become more severe.

"Records are broken from time to time, but record-breaking weather is becoming more common as the climate shifts," Tim Flannery, chief commissioner, said.

Yet already Australia's farmland is on the decline, with more than 60m hectares (600,000 square kilometres) - an area the size of Germany and the UK combined, and equivalent to a 13% loss - falling out of production over the past two decades, Luke Mathews, at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, said.

"Some of this decline is attributed to urban encroachment, but more is attributed to retired land because of poor productivity and environmental considerations," he said, flagging "limited water supplies" as a major land constraint.

Much of the land lost will have been of poor quality, used only for grazing, but in some areas, notably parts of Western Australia, extended dryness is threatening what have historically been arable farms too.

Read the whole thing.  If I were in the Great Plains, I'd be feeling a might bit uncomfortable.