Work

The Impact of Global Warming on U.S. Agriculture: An Econometric Analysis of Optimal Growing Conditions

Year: 2006

Type: article

Abstract: We link farmland values to climatic, soil, and socioeconomic variables for U.S. counties east of the 100th meridian, the historical boundary of agriculture not primarily dependent on irrigation. Degree days, a nonlinear transformation of the climatic variables suggested by agronomic experiments as more relevant to crop yield, gives an improved fit and increased robustness. Estimated coefficients are consistent with the experimental results. The model is employed to estimate the potential impacts on farmland values for a range of recent warming scenarios. The predictions are very robust, and more than 75% of the counties in our sample show a statistically significant effect, ranging from moderate gains to large losses, with losses in the aggregate that can become quite large under scenarios involving sustained heavy use of fossil fuels.

Source: The Review of Economics and Statistics

DOI: 10.1162/rest.2006.88.1.113

Authors: Wolfram Schlenker, W. Michael Hanemann, Anthony C. Fisher

Institutions: Columbia University, University of California, Berkeley

Language: English

Topic: Climate change impacts on agriculture

Subfield: Agronomy and Crop Science

Field: Agricultural and Biological Sciences

Domain: Life Sciences

SDGs: Climate action, Zero hunger

Open Access status: green

Funders: California Energy Commission, Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics, Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California, San Diego