Publication: Measuring Impacts and Adaptations to Climate Change: A Structural Ricardian Model of African Livestock Management
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Date
2008
ISSN
01695150
Published
2008
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This article develops a new cross-sectional methodology that explicitly incorporates adaptation into an analysis of the impacts of climate change. The methodology examines how a farmer will change choices of species and number to adapt to climate. The approach is applied to study Africa, where the impacts of climate change are expected to be the most severe. The results indicate that in warmer places, African farmers switch from beef cattle to more heat-tolerant goats and sheep. In wetter places, farmers switch from cattle and sheep to goats and chickens. The results indicate that large commercial livestock operations specializing in beef cattle will be hard hit from climate change whereas small farmers who can easily substitute to goats and/or sheep will be more resilient.
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Publication A Structural Ricardian Analysis of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptations in African Agriculture(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-04)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.Publication A Ricardian Analysis of the Distribution of Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture across Agro-ecological Zones in Africa(2009)This paper examines the distribution of climate change impacts across the sixteen Agro-Ecological Zones (AEZs) of Africa. We combine net revenue from livestock and crops and regress total net revenue on a set of climate, soil, and socio-economic variables with and without country fixed effects. Although African crop net revenue is very sensitive to climate change, combined livestock and crop net revenue is more climate resilient. With the hot and dry CCC climate scenario, average damage estimates reach 27% by 2100, but with the mild and wet PCM scenario, African farmers will benefit. The analysis of AEZs implies that the effects of climate change will be quite different across Africa. For example, currently productive areas such as dry/moist savannah are more vulnerable to climate change while currently less productive agricultural zones such as humid forest or sub-humid AEZs become more productive in the future.Publication The Impact of Climate Change on Livestock Management in Africa : A Structural Ricardian Analysis(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-07)This paper develops the structural Ricardian method, a new approach to modeling agricultural performance using cross-sectional evidence, and uses the method to study animal husbandry in Africa. The model is intended to estimate the structure beneath Ricardian results in order to understand how farmers change their behavior in response to climate. A survey of over 5,000 livestock farmers in 10 countries reveals that the selection of species, the net income per animal, and the number of animals are all highly dependent on climate. As climate warms, net income across all animals will fall, especially across beef cattle. The fall in net income causes African farmers to reduce the number of animals on their farms. The fall in relative revenues also causes them to shift away from beef cattle and toward sheep and goats. All farmers will lose income but the most vulnerable farms are large African farms that currently specialize in beef cattle. Small livestock and large livestock farms respond to climates differently. Small farms are diversified, relying on dairy cattle, goats, sheep, and chickens. Large farms specialize in dairy and beef cattle. Estimating a separate multinomial logit selection model for small and large farms reveals that the two types of farm choose species differently and specifically have different climate response functions. The regressions of the number of animals also reveal that large farms are more responsive to climate. The results indicate that warming will be harmful to commercial livestock owners, especially cattle owners. Owners of commercial livestock farms have few alternatives either in crops or other animal species. In contrast, small livestock farms are better able to adapt to warming or precipitation increases by switching to heat tolerant animals or crops. Livestock operations will be a safety valve for small farmers if warming or drought causes their crops to fail.Publication Is an Integrated Farm More Resilient against Climate Change? A Micro-econometric Analysis of Portfolio Diversification in African Agriculture(2010)This paper examines whether an integrated farm that owns both crops and livestock is more resilient under global warming than a specialized farm in crops. Using around 9000 farm surveys across Africa, we explore how farmers choose one of the farm types and how the net revenue of each type varies across the range of climate in Africa. The results indicate that an integrated farm increases in number while a specialized farm decreases across Africa under climate predictions for 2060. The relative profitability of each system against each other also changes. An integrated farm becomes relatively more profitable over specialized farms half a century from now. The impacts of climate change on integrated farms range from 9% loss to 27% gain depending on climate scenarios. Behavioral models can capture portfolio diversification benefits that agro-economic models cannot measure.Publication Climate Change Adaptation in Africa : A Microeconomic Analysis of Livestock Choice(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-07)This paper uses quantitative methods to examine the way African farmers have adapted livestock management to the range of climates found across the African continent. The authors use logit analysis to estimate whether farmers adopt livestock. They then use three econometric models to examine which species farmers choose: a primary choice multinomial logit, an optimal portfolio multinomial logit, and a demand system multivariate probit. Comparing the results of the three methods of estimating species selection reveals that the three approaches yield similar results. Using data from over 9,000 African livestock farmers in 10 countries, the analysis finds that farmers are more likely to choose to have livestock as temperatures increase and as precipitation decreases. Across all methods of estimating choice, livestock farmers in warmer locations are less likely to choose beef cattle and chickens and more likely to choose goats and sheep. As precipitation increases, cattle and sheep decrease but goats and chickens increase. The authors simulate the way farmers' choices might change with a set of uniform climate changes and a set of climate model scenarios. The uniform scenarios predict that warming and drying would increase livestock ownership but that increases in precipitation would decrease it. The climate scenarios predict a decrease in the probability of beef cattle and an increase in the probability of sheep and goats, and they predict that more heat-tolerant animals will dominate the future African landscape.
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