Evidence of climate change impacts on crop comparative advantage and land use

Abstract

Relative agricultural productivity shocks emerging from climate change will alter regional cropland use. Land allocations are sensitive to crop profits that in turn depend on yield effects induced by changes in climate and technology. We develop and apply an integrated framework to assess the impact of climate change on agricultural productivity and land use for the U.S. Northern Great Plains. Crop‐specific yield–weather models reveal crop comparative advantage due to differential yield impacts of weather across the region's major crops, that is, alfalfa, wheat, soybeans, and maize. We define crop profits as a function of the weather‐driven yields, which are then used to model land use allocation decisions. This ultimately allows us to simulate the impact of climate change under the RCP4.5 emissions scenario on land allocated to the region's major crops as well as to grass/pasture. Upon removing the trends effects in yields, climate change is projected to lower yields by 33–64% over 2031–2055 relative to 1981–2005, with soybean being the least and alfalfa the most affected crops. Yield projections applied to the land use model at present‐day input costs and output prices reveals that Dakotas’ grass acreage will increase by up to 23%, displacing croplands. Wheat acreage is expected to increase by up to 54% in select southeastern counties of North Dakota and South Dakota, where maize/soy acreage had increased by up to 58% during 1995–2016.

Impact of climate change on global agricultural markets under different shared socioeconomic pathways

“…Our yield decrease is more in line with Crane-Droesch (2018) who finds corn yield decreases of approximately 30% in the RCP8.5 scenario and the years 2040-2069. Arora et al (2020) find, for the U.S. Northern Plains, yields reductions for the 2031-2055 period of 33% and 44% for soybeans and corn, respectively. These authors use the RCP4.5 scenario.…”

“…Multiple authors assess the impact of climate change on U.S. agriculture in general or specific regions in particular. Multiple authors focus their analysis on the U.S. Midwest and Great Plains given the importance for corn, soybeans, alfalfa, and wheat production (Lobell et al, 2014;Lant et al, 2016;Kukal and Irmak, 2018;Crane-Droesch, 2018;Arora et al, 2020). The general consensus is that there are significant decreases in yield for maize of 30% or more and the importance of vapor pressure deficit (VPD) and soil moisture in future climate scenarios (Lobell et al, 2013).…”

“…The effects of climate change on global food production and food security through crop yield levels and variability are receiving increasing attention because negative impacts on major crops are expected (Müller and Robertson, 2014;Rosenzweig et al, 2014;Carraro, 2016;Iizumi et al, 2017;Zhao et al, 2017;Schauberger et al, 2017;Schleussner et al, 2018;Huffman et al, 2018;Arora et al, 2020). Investments in agricultural research and development (R&D) needed for offsetting some of these yield losses (Baldos et al, 2020), and the implications of changing levels of yields and variability of these yields for crop insurance (Tack et al, 2018) have also been estimated.…”

Farmers’ perceptions of climate change and adaptation behavior in Wushen Banner, China

“…Agriculture is extremely vulnerable to climate change (Abid et al 2019;Habtemariam et al 2019;Kabir et al 2017;Nelson et al 2009). Although climate change may have beneficial effects on certain crops, the negative impacts of climate change have been widely acknowledged and documented, especially by policymakers and researchers, which have affect farmers' livelihoods (Zhong et al 2019;Arora et al 2020). Farmers need to make adjustments to their agricultural systems to adapt to a changing climate (Khanal and Wilson 2019).…”

Agricultural and Forestry Land and Labor Use under Long-Term Climate Change in Chile

“…Despite this limitation, our approach to projecting future impacts on land use and net income in agriculture in the context of climate change contributes to the methodological toolset for analyses in the case where simulations from optimization-based programming models (for example, [19,20]) require considerably more production-level data than are currently available in less-developed countries. While hedonic land-price models [21,22] are methodologically similar to the econometric approach taken in this present study, they typically do not address the details of land allocations to specific crops, and for those analyses that do address the details of input use, the modeling demands a considerable amount of land-and input-price data matched to local weather and climate data [23].…”