Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change through Growing Season Adjustments: Evidence from Corn in China

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that climate change will impose severe challenges on agriculture with profound implications. Although some hypothetical simulations have suggested that an optimal re‐arrangement of the growing season can substantially mitigate yield losses under future climate, no causal estimate has been provided on quantifying the extent to which farmers are adapting through growing‐season adjustments. Using a novel microlevel data with detailed crop progress information in China over 1993–2013, we show that both planting dates and growing season lengths significantly respond to contemporaneous temperature and precipitation. Our estimates suggest that, for a median site in our sample, the adaptive behavior in growing season adjustments can lead to a two to six days earlier planting date and another three to six days shorter growing season by the end of this century. These induced adjustments can avoid up to 9% of the crop damages caused by climate change. However, our empirical analysis does not find clear evidence of long‐run response or accompanied input adjustments, suggesting potential for developing policies and tools to further aid the adaptive process.

The Agro-Climatic Change Characteristics across China during the Latest Decades

“…A better understanding of the change and variation of temperature, precipitation, and insolation during the agricultural growing season is necessary for assessing climatic resources during the period of agricultural production. It is generally accepted that the crop planting date has changed and growing seasons have lengthened significantly in response to climate warming, especially under contemporaneous temperature and precipitation [12,30]. Climatic conditions for agriculture are thus expected to be measured at the yearly dynamic PAGS instead of the fixed time period.…”

The impacts of temperature on Chinese food processing firms*

“…Recent studies have begun to explore evidence of agriculture’s adaptation to a changing climate (Burke & Emerick, 2016; Chen & Gong, 2021; Cui, 2020; Cui & Xie, 2021). These studies find evidence on climate change adaptation through acreage adjustments in US agriculture (Cui, 2020) and through growing season adjustments in China’s agriculture (Cui & Xie, 2021).…”

“…Recent studies have begun to explore evidence of agriculture’s adaptation to a changing climate (Burke & Emerick, 2016; Chen & Gong, 2021; Cui, 2020; Cui & Xie, 2021). These studies find evidence on climate change adaptation through acreage adjustments in US agriculture (Cui, 2020) and through growing season adjustments in China’s agriculture (Cui & Xie, 2021). Apart from assessing the sensitivities of the agricultural and industrial sectors to rising temperatures, a few studies have investigated the impacts of changing weather conditions on international trade (Jones & Olken, 2010; Li et al., 2015) and GDP (Deryugina & Hsiang, 2014; Li et al., 2021).…”

Technological appropriateness of biomass production in rural settings: Addressing water hyacinths (E. crassipes) problem in Lake Tondano, Indonesia

“…The impacts of climate change eventually disrupt the stability of affected systems, which could reduce their capacity to maintain long-term balances in the nature or society. As an example, climate change-induced shifts of seasonal temperature fluctuation alter the agriculture timetable [13][14][15], which would reduce yields and eventually affect food security. At times, however, the effects of climate change may occur first as positive impacts to certain parts of biological systems, yet it would later lead to negative impacts to different system parts connected to the first-affected parts [16][17][18].…”