Climate Adaptation and Conservation Agriculture among Peruvian Farmers

Abstract

Peruvian agriculture will likely experience serious economic impacts of climate change, with changing rainfall and temperature patterns forcing farmers to confront abnormal climate conditions. In this context we study the impact of climate shocks on the agricultural practices of farmers who grow two main staples: maize and potato. We focus on four types of agricultural techniques: (a) those that reduce soil degradation, (b) those that conserve water, (c) the application of inorganic fertilizer, and (d) the application of pesticides and herbicides. We combine three rounds of cross‐sectional data from the Peru National Agricultural Survey with long‐term climate data to construct georeferenced shocks of abnormal rainfall levels and variation. Our empirical strategy controls for time‐invariant characteristics of small localities, secular time trends, and farmer and farm characteristics to estimate how shocks affect farmers' choices in subsequent growing cycles. Our findings show that: (a) farmers reduce soil conservation practices after one year of high rainfall, but multiple years of low rainfall increase adoption significantly; (b) the rate of pesticide use increases by eight percentage points following a drought year but is insensitive to multiple shock years; (c) water conservation measures are used less after high precipitation or when volatility was unusually low, and multiple years of insufficient rain tend to enhance this response; and (d) fertilizer use is less sensitive than other outcomes to weather fluctuations. These findings suggest that understanding how responsive farmers' practices are to weather shocks can inform policy design and help mitigate risks from changing weather patterns.

The impact of extreme precipitation on nutrient runoff

“…By capturing differences in water quality within the same HUC8 and the same month, we argue the variation is driven solely by that day's precipitation. After controlling for time and location fixed effects, any particular day's extreme weather events can be considered "as good as random" (Tambet & Stopnitzky, 2021). Under this "as good as random" assumption, our empirical strategy causally identifies the effects of weather shocks on our outcomes of interest.…”

Net-Zero Industry: Options for Plastics, Textiles, Automobiles, and Fisheries in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru

“…Peru faces a number of climate risks, and the breadth and scope of the national response has begun to reflect this. Risks include disruption to key economic activities such as copper, gold, and zinc mining from periods of intense rainfall (Gonzalez et al, 2019), and negative impacts on agricultural production from periods of water scarcity, increasing variability of water resources, and rising temperatures (Ovalle- Rivera et al, 2015;Quiroz et al, 2018;Tambet & Stopnitzky, 2021). Forecasts indicate that Peru is likely to experience more flooding (Bergmann, 2021), with the retreat of glaciers possibly driving both increased flood risks from atypical melting (Huggel et al, 2020) and reduced availability of water resources from their shrinking over the long term (Chevallier et al, 2011;Mark et al, 2017;Oesterling, 2015).…”

Farmers’ Adaptation to Extreme Weather: Evidence from Rural China

“…Climate change has increased the frequency of natural disasters, making agricultural production activities more vulnerable to disaster, increasing the uncertainty of crop yield and quality, and farmers' production income is facing greater uncertainty (Barrios et al, 2008). Climate-adaptive technology can reduce the threat of natural disasters to agricultural production, ensure agricultural production, and reduce the uncertainty of farmers' income (Dougherty et al, 2020;Sarr et al, 2021;Scognamillo & Sitko, 2021;Tambet & Stopnitzky, 2021). In order to avoid production risks caused by extreme weather, farmers will adopt climate-adaptive technology (Koundouri et al, 2006).…”

“…Previous studies on farmers' adoption of climate-adaptive technology have mainly taken a certain type of technology as an example. Climate-adaptive technology includes adaptive new variety technology, conservation tillage technology (straw mulching, orchard grass), application of inorganic fertilizer, the application of pesticides and herbicides, and water-saving irrigation technology (Abid et al, 2016;Tambet & Stopnitzky, 2021). In apple production, the climate-adaptive technology that farmers mainly adopt in response to extreme weather includes water-saving irrigation, grass growing in orchards, straw mulching (to prevent droughts); spreading high-quality bio-organic fertilizers (to prevent oods); building anti-hail nets, timely spraying (to prevent hail disaster); building windbreak forests, selecting wind-resistant varieties, using ropes, hanging branches, and supporting feet ( to prevent wind disasters); applying base fertilizer in autumn, foliar fertilization before leaves fall, and spraying dry branches before germination (to prevent freezing damage) (Olen et al, 2015) The agricultural sector is most affected by extreme weather.…”