A Structural Ricardian Analysis of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptations in African Agriculture

This paper develops a Structural Ricardian model to measure climate change impacts that explicitly models the choice of farm type in African agriculture. This two stage model first estimates the type of farm chosen and then the conditional incomes of each farm type after removing selection biases. The results indicate that increases in temperature encourage farmers to adopt mixed farming and avoid specialized farms such as crop-only or livestock-only farms. Increases in precipitation encourage farmers to shift from irrigated to rainfed crops. As temperatures increase, farm incomes from crop-only farms or livestock-only farms fall whereas incomes from mixed farms increase. With precipitation increases, farm incomes from irrigated farms fall whereas incomes from rainfed farms increase. Naturally, the Structural Ricardian model predicts much smaller impacts than a model that holds farm type fixed. With a hot dry climate scenario, the Structural Ricardian model predicts that farm income will fall 50 percent but the fixed farm type model predicts farm incomes will fall 75 percent.

Bibliographic Details

Main Authors:	Seo, S. Niggol, Mendelsohn, Robert
Language:	English
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC 2008-04
Subjects:	AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, AGRICULTURAL OUTPUT, AGRICULTURAL POLICY, AGRICULTURAL POTENTIAL, ANIMALS, CLIMATE, CLIMATE CHANGE, CLIMATE CHANGES, CLIMATE IMPACTS, CLIMATE MODELS, CLIMATE SYSTEM, CLIMATE VARIABLES, CLIMATIC CHANGE, CROP, CROPS, CULTIVATION, ECOLOGICAL ZONES, ECONOMIC IMPACTS, ELECTRICITY, FAO, FARM, FARM INCOME, FARM INCOMES, FARMER, FARMERS, FARMING, FARMLAND, FARMS, FORESTRY, GLOBAL WARMING, GREENHOUSE GAS, INTERGOVERNMENTAL PANEL ON CLIMATE CHANGE, IPCC, IRRIGATION, LAND VALUE, LIVESTOCK, LIVESTOCK DISEASES, LIVESTOCK MANAGEMENT, LIVESTOCK PRODUCTS, LIVESTOCK SPECIES, MAIZE, MICROECONOMICS, MILK, MILK PRODUCTION, MILLET, MIXED FARMING, NORTH AFRICA, PRECIPITATION, PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS, RAINFALL, RAINFED AGRICULTURE, RAINFED FARMING, SOIL, SOIL TYPE, SOILS, SOUTH AMERICA, SOUTH AMERICAN, SPACING, SPRING, TEMPERATURE, TEMPERATURE DATA, WATER RESOURCES, WORLD FOOD SUPPLY,
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2008/04/9366587/structural-ricardian-analysis-climate-change-impacts-adaptations-african-agriculture https://hdl.handle.net/10986/6770
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