Recipient Organization
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, DAVIS
410 MRAK HALL
DAVIS,CA 95616-8671
Performing Department
Agricultural and Resource Economics
Non Technical Summary
This project supports the mission of the Agricultural Experiment Station by addressing the Hatch Act area(s) of: plant and animal production, protection, and health; sustainable agriculture.Climate change represents one of the more pressing challenges of our time. Agriculture is one of the economic sectors most vulnerable to climate change because weather is a significant input in agricultural production systems. A large and growing body of research has investigated the effects of climate change on agricultural productivity and agricultural income. The bulk of this research, however, has focused either on broad economic indicators such as farm-level profits or regional farmland values or on the yields of annual field crops such as corn. The empirical evidence from this research suggests potentially large impacts on US agriculture.Research on the impacts of climate change on perennial and specialty crops, or on animal agriculture, is limited, as is research on climate change impacts in irrigated systems and in other parts of the world. Methods that address the effects of climate change on field crops such as maize cannot be straightforwardly applied to perennial crops, whose phenology typically responds to weather events in complex ways and over multiple years. Results obtained for rain-fed field crops are not directly transposable to irrigated production systems. Because California derives a large share of its agricultural income from specialty crops, research that focuses specifically on such crops is warranted. Another peculiarity of specialty crops is that the demand facing California farmers is likely more inelastic for such crops than for major field crops, making market adjustments more relevant to ultimate welfare impacts.In addition, impacts of climate change in other world regions matter for California, because California agriculture is well integrated into world markets. Even if climate change were bad for California agricultural productivity, if impacts were to be worse in other parts of the world, California could still gain from climate change through increases in world agricultural prices.Another poorly understood area is that of adaptation to climate change. In this project we will develop empirical tools to assess adaptation strategies with a view to increase the resilience of agricultural systems to climatic changes. The role of markets in shaping climate change impacts and providing adaptation pathways is also poorly understood, and we will seek to address this gap. We will also seek to address the role of irrigation in buffering against climate change.Finally, the literature on climate change mitigation from agriculture, that is, on the ways that agriculture could contribute to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, is still scarce. This is however a very relevant subject in California, who leads the nation in terms of climate policy and has plans to contain emissions from agriculture. There are large gaps in scientific knowledge regarding (i) the economic potential of California agriculture to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and (ii) the best ways to induce these emission reductions through policy. This project seeks to fill this gap in order to inform state policy.This project is directly related to the Hatch area of plant and animal production as it seeks to understand how weather and climate have affected agricultural output in the past and how a new climate will influence agricultural production. It is related to the Hatch area of sustainable agriculture insofar as it seeks to understand how farming systems may successfully adapt to a changing climate.
Animal Health Component
75%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
25%
Applied
75%
Developmental
(N/A)
Goals / Objectives
The overall objective of the project is to improve our understanding of the impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity and agricultural markets, as well as adaptation mechanisms and ways that agriculture could contribute to climate change mitigation. The specific objectives are:1. To predict the likely impacts of climate change on the productivity of various agricultural systems and on related agricultural markets, including (but not limited to) California specialty crops and irrigated crops;2. To investigate possible climate change adaptation pathways;3. To investigate the economic potential of agriculture to contribute to climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration and reductions in greenhouse gases emissions, and develop policy recommendations.
Project Methods
The methods used will differ according to the specific objectives being pursued. For climate change impact predictions, the gold standard in the field is to use econometric models on historical data and project effects into the future using a wide range of available climate change scenarios. Similar techniques could be used to address the question of adaptation, although the literature is less settled on this aspect. Part of our proposed work consists of extending the econometric approach to account for climatic adaptation of agricultural systems in impact assessment studies.Regarding mitigation, mathematical programming techniques offer advantages over econometrics, notably their lesser reliance on large datasets and their ability to model detailed behavioral responses such as input intensity adjustments at the crop level. This last point is crucial as changes in agricultural management practices (fertilization rates, tillage) can lead to substantial changes in net GHG emissions from fields.Cost-benefit analyses relying on survey data may be used to assess the feasibility of new adaptation or mitigation techniques.