Fields of corn in Siberia? Soy plantations in the Yukon? It’s not as far-fetched as it may seem.

Global heating will expand the frontiers of agriculture, a new study explains, making it possible in the near future to grow certain crops in places that were once inhospitable to them.

And that, the study’s authors say, could be a problem.

Climate change is moving the agricultural frontier northward into places that are currently mostly forested. The environmental consequences of developing these new frontiers, the researchers write, “could be catastrophic.”

“Boreal areas in Russia and Canada are going to be increasingly suitable for agriculture this century and, while that has big food production potential, it also has some serious environmental consequences,” said Lee Hannah , a senior scientist at Conservation International and the lead author of the study, published today in the journal PLOS One.

While expanding farming into new areas could help feed millions, it may well represent a Faustian bargain,…