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This paper distinguishes between bridging and bonding social capital to assess their roles for individual farmers’ adaptation strategies taken through technology adoption. Based on primary data collected in Langcang River (LCR) basin area in southwestern China, the paper finds: (1) adaptation measures have been widely taken by surveyed households, but non-infrastructure-based measures are more prevalent than infrastructure-based measures and (2) surveyed households have strong social capital while having weak bridging social capital. Their bonding social capital has significantly positive relationship with their adaptation decisions, but bridging social capital does not have such statistically significant relationship. It recommends that the governments contemplate carefully how to help the poor to get a good combination of bonding and bridging social capital when designing policies to help the rural poor to improve their long-term adaptive capacity and achieve sustainable rural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change and variability threaten the sustainability of agricultural and food production, especially in agrarian communities. In Southern Africa, rainfall is expected to decline by almost 10% by the year 2050 and the largest increase in temperature can be experienced. Despite the potential risks of climate change on agricultural productivity, Botswana does not have a dedicated policy to respond to climate change. Furthermore, there is a dearth of research done in Botswana to provide an understanding of factors that shape farmers' adaptation to climate change and institutional link to the adaptive capacity of farming households. Therefore, the aim of this article is to analyse institutions that influence farmers' adaptation strategies of farmers in Botswana, using Ngamiland East as a case study. The paper relies on empirical data collected from purposively selected key informants and 300 households. The results show that the majority of farmers who have climate variability adaptation strategies in place are largely influenced by indigenous knowledge. Women and low-income earners are less likely to employ climate change adaptation strategies in order to improve their agricultural productivity. This article gives a better perspective of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing institutions designed to enable agricultural productivity. It recommends that macro-level and local government institutions should acknowledge the indigenous knowledge, community-level institutions and farmers' adaptive capacity in policy formulation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a potential threat to achieving food security, particularly in the most food insecure regions. However, interpreting climate change projections to better understand the potential impacts of a changing climate on food security outcomes is challenging. This paper addresses this challenge through presenting a framework that enables rapid country-level assessment of vulnerability to food insecurity under a range of climate change and adaptation investment scenarios. The results show that vulnerability to food insecurity is projected to increase under all emissions scenarios, and the geographic distribution of vulnerability is similar to that of the present-day; parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia are most severely affected. High levels of adaptation act to off-set these increases; however, only the scenario with the highest level of mitigation combined with high levels of adaptation shows improvements in vulnerability compared to the present-day. The results highlight the dual requirement for mitigation and adaptation to avoid the worst impacts of climate change and to make gains in tackling food insecurity. The approach is an update to the existing Hunger and Climate Vulnerability Index methodology to enable future projections, and the framework presented allows rapid updates to the results as and when new information becomes available, such as updated country-level yield data or climate model output. This approach provides a framework for assessing policy-relevant human food security outcomes for use in long-term climate change and food security planning; the results have been made available on an interactive website for policymakers (www.metoffice.gov.uk/food-insecurity-index). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of intra-regional trade on food availability within the context of global climatic change in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). To that end, the study uses a module of trade cost minimization built within a bio-economic optimization model of cropland allocation. The results show that the climate-induced trade pattern in ECOWAS depends on the prevailing socio-economic conditions during the century. No specific pattern of trade flows is predicted but several countries may become dependent on food imports outside of ECOWAS. An adjustment of the common external tariffs (CET) may reduce food import costs. Also, doubling crop yields by 2050 could significantly reduce outside dependence. Finally, actions are urgently needed to be taken to foster agricultural production in ECOWAS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Total factor productivity (TFP) analysis has been the focus of a large number of methodological and empirical studies over the past several decades. One remarkable gap in this literature is the omission of climatic variables as regressors in the models used to derive TFP measures. The purpose of this paper is to narrow this gap by developing climate-adjusted (CA) TFP measures. We combine information from the Climatic Research Unit with Food and Agriculture Organization data for 28 Latin American and Caribbean countries over a 52-year period (1961-2012) to estimate random parameter stochastic production frontier (SPF) models. The goal is to investigate the impact of climatic variability on TFP. The estimated coefficients from the SPF models are used to construct a climatic effects index across countries and over time. The average annual variation in climatic conditions is stronger at the end of the 2000s compared to earlier periods. Climatic variability has a negative effect on production in 20 of the 28 LAC countries analyzed, and this is more severe over Central America and the Caribbean. The average reduction in output across the region attributable to climatic variables is between 0.02 and 22.7% over the last decade compared to the period 1961-1999. The estimated average annual growth rate of CATFP (0.69%) is consistently lower than TFP (1.08%), confirming the adverse impact of climatic variability on agricultural output and productivity in LAC. The results show considerable variability across countries, and this points to the importance of accounting for climatic effects in analyzing TFP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper measures the influence of climate normals (average long-term surface wetness and temperature) and interannual climate variance on farms in the United States and Brazil using satellite data. The paper finds that just climate normals or just climate variance variables can explain both net revenues and how much land is used for cropland. However, because they are correlated with each other, it is important to include both normals and variance in the same statistical model to get accurate measures of their individual contribution to farm outcomes. In general, higher climate variance increases the probability that land is used for cropland in both countries and higher temperatures reduce both cropland and land values. Other annual effects were not consistent across the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global surface temperature is projected to warm over the coming decades, with regional differences expected in temperature change, rainfall and the frequency of extreme events. Temperature is a major determinant of crop growth and development, affecting planting date, growing season length and yield. We investigated the effects of increments of mean global temperature warming from 0.5 °C to 4 °C on soybean and maize development and yield, both globally and for the main producing countries, and simulated adaptation through changing planting date and variety. Increasing temperature resulted in reduced growing season lengths and ultimately reduced yields for both crops. The global yield for maize decreased as temperature increased, although the severity of the decrease was dependent on geographic region. Small temperature increases of 0.5 °C had no effect on soybean yield, although yield decreased as temperature increased. These negative effects, however, were partly compensated for by the implementation of adaptation strategies including planting earlier in the season and changing variety. The degree of compensation was dependent on geographical area and crop, with maize adaptation delaying the negative effects of temperature on yield, compared to soybean adaptation which increased yield in China, India and Korea DPR as well as delaying the effects in the remaining countries. The results of this paper indicate the degree to which farmer-controlled adaptation strategies can alleviate the negative impacts of increasing temperature on two major crop species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impacts of climate change on US returns to research investments on agricultural productivity. We examine this using a historical data set in a panel time-series econometric model of state agricultural productivity. The fitted model allows derivation of the rate of return to research investments and the effects of climate change thereon. We find climate change is altering the rate of return to public agricultural research in a spatially heterogeneous manner. Increases in precipitation raise returns to research, while the impact of higher temperatures varies by region, are negative in Southern areas, particularly the Southern Plains, and positive in northern areas. We simulate the impact of projected climate change and find cases where agricultural productivity is reduced, for example in the Southern Plains. Finally, we consider the amount of research investment that is needed to adapt to overcome the impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity. Under the 2100 scenario, a 7-17 % increase in total US research investment is needed to adapt, but effects by region differ greatly-some requiring little changes and the Southern Plain requiring an increase as high as 57 %. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing appropriate climate change adaptations to protect biodiversity requires taking into account the dynamics of agro-ecological and socio-economic change. A framework for approaching this problem was proposed, but not applied in detail, as part of a major biodiversity and climate change report prepared in Australia. This paper describes the first trial application of the method. It was applied across Vietnam as the Government is interested in identifying adaptation options and detailed data are readily available for its 65 provinces. The process involves identifying ecoregions and collating information for each region based on the current conditions and trends in biodiversity, population, income and agricultural production. Climate change scenarios are identified for each region, together with governance options. Educational needs and key adaptation actions are then identified for each region taking into account the agro-ecological and socio-economic input data. It is concluded that the framework could easily be applied in other countries and should assist the development of strategic adaptation options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the North China Plain, the grain yield of irrigated wheat-maize cropping system has been steadily increasing in the past decades under a significant warming climate. This paper combined regional and field data with modeling to analyze the changes in the climate in the last 40 years, and to investigate the influence of changes in crop varieties and management options to crop yield. In particular, we examined the impact of a planned adaptation strategy to climate change -'Double-Delay' technology, i.e., delay both the sowing time of wheat and the harvesting time of maize, on both wheat and maize yield. The results show that improved crop varieties and management options not only compensated some negative impact of reduced crop growth period on crop yield due to the increase in temperature, they have contributed significantly to crop yield increase. The increase in temperature before over-wintering stage enabled late sowing of winter wheat and late harvesting of maize, leading to overall 4-6% increase in total grain yield of the wheat-maize system. Increased use of farming machines and minimum tillage technology also shortened the time for field preparation from harvest time of summer maize to sowing time of winter wheat, which facilitated the later harvest of summer maize. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects of climatic and non-climatic factors on the mean and variance of corn, soybean and winter wheat yield in southwestern Ontario, Canada over a period of 26 years. Average crop yields increase at a decreasing rate with the quantity of inputs used, and decrease with the area planted to the crop. Climate variables have a major impact on mean yield with the length of the growing season being the primary determinant across all three crops. Increases in the variability of temperature and precipitation decrease mean yield and increase its variance. Yield variance is poorly explained by both seasonal and monthly climate variable models. Projections of future climate change suggest that average crop yield will increase with warmer temperatures and a longer growing season which is only partially offset by forecast increases in the variability of temperature and rainfall. The projections would also depend on future technological developments, which have generated significant increases in yield over time despite changing annual weather conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The great human-environmental diversity of Mexico provides a framework for an initial understanding of the wide disparities between rich and poor. Mexico is still dominated in many regions by agriculture, and during the last 25 years, weather-related disasters have accounted for about 80% of economic losses. This is dramatic, especially considering that this sector produces only ca. 4% of GDP while providing a livelihood to one-quarter of the country’s population. Based on a spatial model, this paper tests the contribution of natural disasters to catalyzing the emigration process in vulnerable regions throughout Mexico. Besides coping and adaptive capacity, we assess the effect of economic losses from disasters in combination with adverse production and trade conditions during the 1990s in triggering out-migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the recent decade, with the growing recognition of the possibility of climate change and clear evidence of observed changes in climate during 20th century, an increasing emphasis on food security and its regional impacts has come to forefront of the scientific community. In recent times, the crop simulation models have been used extensively to study the impact of climate change on agricultural production and food security. The output provided by the simulation models can be used to make appropriate crop management decisions and to provide farmers and others with alternative options for their farming system. It is expected that in the coming decades with the increased use of computers, the use of simulation models by farmers and professionals as well as policy and decision makers will increase. In India, substantial work has been done in last decade aimed at understanding the nature and magnitude of change in yield of different crops due to projected climate change. This paper presents an overview of the state of the knowledge of possible effect of the climate variability and change on food grain production in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]