18
H. Ahumada and M. Cornejo
Introduction
Worldwide population growth is expected to increase by over a third—or 2.2 billion
people—by 2050 according to the 2017 United Nations World Population Prospects
revision. This projection poses an urgent need to increase agricultural production
to meet global needs for food, animal feed, and biofuel, by increasing the amount
of agricultural land to grow crops, enhancing productivity on existing agricultural
lands, or both. The main challenge would be how to meet the increasing demand for
food while protecting our natural resources.
Although the effects of climate change may imply incorporating new areas devoted
to different crops, the possibility of extending lands to production or increasing crop
yields on existing lands may be threatened by global climate change. Crop production
and yield are highly dependent on climate. Increases in temperature and changing
patterns of rainfall associated with global and local climate changes may lead to
a considerable decline in crop production. Also, extreme weather events such as
droughts, heat or cold waves, and heavy rainfall leading to floods have increased
since 1950 according to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC). An analysis of long-term and short-term weather events
is needed in order to measure the effects of climate change on crop yields.
Agricultural production needs to adopt more efficient and sustainable production
methods to lessen the negative effects of climate change and to better tailor policies
seeking to promote sustainable growth in the agricultural sector.
Adaptation to climate variability and extreme events can help in reducing vulnerability to long-term climate change. However, the effects of climate change also need
to be considered along with other evolving factors that affect agricultural production,
such as changes in farming practices and technology as well as commodity or input
prices. Quantifying these effects will provide important insights into how much to
spend on mitigation and adaptation. Furthermore, understanding and estimating the
effects of climate change will also help policy-makers to develop mitigation and
adaptation strategies.
Therefore, the aim of this chapter is to discuss how econometrics can help understand the effects of climate change on the time behavior of crop yields at a countrylevel scale. Indeed, climate econometrics provides an approach to give a rigorous
basis for many hypotheses related to climate change. In this line, an accurate econometric strategy to model the effects of climate change on crop yields should be able
to deal with, at least:
1 the non-stationarity nature of climate variables;
2 exogeneity;
3 the existence of nonlinearities;
4 the presence of extreme events;
5 disentangling short- and long-run effects of climate change;
6 collinearities in a multivariate framework.
H. Ahumada and M. Cornejo
Introduction
Worldwide population growth is expected to increase by over a third—or 2.2 billion
people—by 2050 according to the 2017 United Nations World Population Prospects
revision. This projection poses an urgent need to increase agricultural production
to meet global needs for food, animal feed, and biofuel, by increasing the amount
of agricultural land to grow crops, enhancing productivity on existing agricultural
lands, or both. The main challenge would be how to meet the increasing demand for
food while protecting our natural resources.
Although the effects of climate change may imply incorporating new areas devoted
to different crops, the possibility of extending lands to production or increasing crop
yields on existing lands may be threatened by global climate change. Crop production
and yield are highly dependent on climate. Increases in temperature and changing
patterns of rainfall associated with global and local climate changes may lead to
a considerable decline in crop production. Also, extreme weather events such as
droughts, heat or cold waves, and heavy rainfall leading to floods have increased
since 1950 according to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC). An analysis of long-term and short-term weather events
is needed in order to measure the effects of climate change on crop yields.
Agricultural production needs to adopt more efficient and sustainable production
methods to lessen the negative effects of climate change and to better tailor policies
seeking to promote sustainable growth in the agricultural sector.
Adaptation to climate variability and extreme events can help in reducing vulnerability to long-term climate change. However, the effects of climate change also need
to be considered along with other evolving factors that affect agricultural production,
such as changes in farming practices and technology as well as commodity or input
prices. Quantifying these effects will provide important insights into how much to
spend on mitigation and adaptation. Furthermore, understanding and estimating the
effects of climate change will also help policy-makers to develop mitigation and
adaptation strategies.
Therefore, the aim of this chapter is to discuss how econometrics can help understand the effects of climate change on the time behavior of crop yields at a countrylevel scale. Indeed, climate econometrics provides an approach to give a rigorous
basis for many hypotheses related to climate change. In this line, an accurate econometric strategy to model the effects of climate change on crop yields should be able
to deal with, at least:
1 the non-stationarity nature of climate variables;
2 exogeneity;
3 the existence of nonlinearities;
4 the presence of extreme events;
5 disentangling short- and long-run effects of climate change;
6 collinearities in a multivariate framework.