Publication: Crop Selection : Adapting to Climage Change in Africa
Loading...
Published
2007-08
ISSN
Date
2012-06-08
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper examines whether the choice of crops is affected by climate in Africa. Using a multinomial logit model, the paper regresses crop choice on climate, soils, and other factors. The model is estimated using a sample of more than 7,000 farmers across 11 countries in Africa. The study finds that crop choice is very climate sensitive. For example, farmers select sorghum and maize-millet in the cooler regions of Africa; maize-beans, maize-groundnut, and maize in moderately warm regions' and cowpea, cowpea-sorghum, and millet-groundnut in hot regions. Further, farmers choose sorghum, and millet-groundnut when conditions are dry; cowpea, cowpea-sorghum, maize-millet, and maize when medium wet; and maize-beans and maize-groundnut when wet. As temperatures warm, farmers will shift toward more heat tolerant crops. Depending on whether precipitation increases or decreases, farmers will also shift toward drought tolerant or water loving crops, respectively. There are several policy relevant conclusions to draw from this study. First, farmers will adapt to climate change by switching crops. Second, global warming impact studies cannot assume crop choice is exogenous. Third, this study only examines choices across current crops. Future farmers may well have more choices. There is an important role for agronomic research in developing new varieties more suited for higher temperatures. Future farmers may have even better adaptation alternatives with an expanded set of crop choices specifically targeted at higher temperatures.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Kurukulasuriya, Pradeep; Mendelsohn, Robert. 2007. Crop Selection : Adapting to Climage Change in Africa. Policy Research Working Paper; No. 4307. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7506 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Digital Object Identifier
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication South Africa’s Fragmented Cities: The Unequal Burden of Labor Market Frictions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-08)Using high-resolution administrative, census, and satellite data, this paper shows that South African cities are characterized by spatial mismatches between where people live and where jobs are located, relative to 20 global peers. Areas within 5 kilometers of commercial centers have 9,300 fewer residents per square kilometer than expected, which is 60 percent below the global median. Poor, dense neighborhoods are most affected. In Johannesburg, a 10-percentile increase in distance from the nearest business hub corresponds to a 3.7-percentile drop in asset wealth (a proxy of household wellbeing) and 4.9-percentile drop in employment. In Cape Town, the declines are 4.0 and 3.7 percentiles, respectively. Employment is 87 percent lower in the poorest decile than the richest in Johannesburg and 61 percent lower in Cape Town. These findings suggest that South Africa’s spatial organization of people and economic activity constrains agglomeration and reinforces inequality. This methodology provides a scalable and standardized data-driven framework to analyze spatial accessibility and agglomeration frictions in complex, data-constrained urban systems.Publication The Evolution of Local Participatory Democracy in Nepal(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-05)Nepal is, according to its constitution, among the world’s most decentralized countries, with a long and complex tradition of local-level public participation. This paper traces the evolution of Nepal’s modern participatory institutions, examining the extent to which they are “induced” by external interventions versus being “organically” rooted in indigenous practices. The paper identifies three broad phases: an initial focus on participation in project implementation; a subsequent phase that expanded citizen engagement; and a third phase of citizen empowerment, culminating in the 2015 federal constitution, which granted unprecedented local autonomy. The analysis yields five key findings. First, over the past 50 years, successive reforms have progressively expanded opportunities for citizens to influence local decision-making. Second, these reforms have integrated traditional participatory mechanisms into formal institutions of local government. Third, although central-level initiatives exist, most participatory platforms continue to operate at the local level. Fourth, the federal constitution has created a new landscape of local democracy, embedding autonomy and accountability. Fifth, although they are still valued in many ethnic and territorial communities, traditional participatory practices are gradually disappearing. The paper concludes by offering policy recommendations to help donor agencies and governments strengthen Nepal’s democratic trajectory. It argues that effective interventions should build on Nepal’s deep participatory traditions while recognizing the constitutional reality of far-reaching local autonomy.Publication Institutional Capacity for Policy Implementation: An Analytical Framework(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)State capacity is an important prerequisite for policy implementation, yet at the country level it is difficult to measure, assess, and reform. This paper proposes a focus on institutional capacity: the ability of public institutions to implement the specific policy mandates for which they are responsible. Based on a review of existing literature, the paper defines the different dimensions that compose institutional capacity and groups them into two cross-cutting categories: organizational dimensions (personnel, financial resources, information systems, and management practices) and governance dimensions (transparency, independence, and accountability). The paper proposes measures for organizational and governance dimensions using existing data, shows intra-institutional variation of these measures within countries, and discusses how new data could be collected for better measurement of these concepts. Finally, the paper illustrates how the framework can be used to diagnose the sources of common problems related to weak policy implementation.Publication Closing the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship: Overcoming Challenges in Law and Practice for Female Entrepreneurs(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2026-01-07)Despite significant strides toward gender equality, women around the world continue to encounter systemic obstacles that hinder their entrepreneurial success. This paper systematically reviews the literature on the barriers female entrepreneurs face and the solutions proposed to overcome these challenges. It discusses institutional factors, financial factors, human capital factors, and social and cultural factors. The literature overview is complemented by a series of stylized facts that illustrate how overcoming some of these existing barriers is correlated with improved women’s entrepreneurship and female labor force participation, drawing on the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law database as well as the World Bank’s Enterprise Surveys. The findings underscore the need for creating an enabling environment where women can thrive as entrepreneurs.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Differential Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change in African Cropland by Agro-Ecological Zones(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-04)This paper quantifies how African farmers have adapted their crop and irrigation decisions to their farm's current agro-ecological zone. The results indicate that farmers carefully consider the climate and other conditions of their farm when making these choices. These results are then used to forecast how farmers might change their irrigation and crop choice decisions if climate changes. The model predicts African farmers would adopt irrigation more often under a very hot and dry climate scenario but less often with a mild and wet scenario. However, farms in the deserts, lowland humid forest, or mid elevation humid forest would reduce irrigation even in the very hot and dry climate scenario. Area under fruits and vegetables would increase Africa-wide with the very hot and dry climate scenario, except in the lowland semi-arid agro-ecological zone. Millet would increase overall under the mild and wet scenario, but decline substantially in the lowland dry savannah and lowland semi-arid agro-ecological zones. Maize would be chosen less often across all the agro-ecological zones under both climate scenarios. Wheat would decrease across Africa. The authors recommend that care must be taken to match adaptations to local conditions because the optimal adaptation would depend on the agro-ecological zone and the climate scenario.Publication The Economic Impact of Climate Change on Kenyan Crop Agriculture : A Ricardian Approach(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-08)This paper measures the economic impact of climate on crops in Kenya. The analysis is based on cross-sectional climate, hydrological, soil, and household level data for a sample of 816 households, and uses a seasonal Ricardian model. Estimated marginal impacts of climate variables suggest that global warming is harmful for agricultural productivity and that changes in temperature are much more important than changes in precipitation. This result is confirmed by the predicted impact of various climate change scenarios on agriculture. The results further confirm that the temperature component of global warming is much more important than precipitation. The authors analyze farmers' perceptions of climate variations and their adaptation to these, and also constraints on adaptation mechanisms. The results suggest that farmers in Kenya are aware of short-term climate change, that most of them have noticed an increase in temperatures, and that some have taken adaptive measures.Publication A Ricardian Analysis of the Impact of Climate Change on African Cropland(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-08)This study examines the impact of climate change on cropland in Africa. It is based on a survey of more than 9,000 farmers in 11 countries: Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Niger, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. The study uses a Ricardian cross-sectional approach in which net revenue is regressed on climate, water flow, soil, and economic variables. The results show that net revenues fall as precipitation falls or as temperatures warm across all the surveyed farms. In addition to examining all farms together, the study examined dryland and irrigated farms separately. Dryland farms are especially climate sensitive. Irrigated farms have a positive immediate response to warming because they are located in relatively cool parts of Africa. The study also examined some simple climate scenarios to see how Africa would respond to climate change. These uniform scenarios assume that only one aspect of climate changes and the change is uniform across all of Africa. In addition, the study examined three climate change scenarios from Atmospheric Oceanic General Circulation Models. These scenarios predicted changes in climate in each country over time. Not all countries are equally vulnerable to climate change. First, the climate scenarios predict different temperature and precipitation changes in each country. Second, it is also important whether a country is already hot and dry. Third, the extent to which farms are irrigated is also important.Publication Measuring the Economic Impact of Climate Change on Ethiopian Agriculture : Ricardian Approach(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-09)This study uses the Ricardian approach to analyze the impact of climate change on Ethiopian agriculture and to describe farmer adaptations to varying environmental factors. The study analyzes data from 11 of the country's 18 agro-ecological zones, representing more than 74 percent of the country, and survey of 1,000 farmers from 50 districts. Regressing of net revenue on climate, household, and soil variables show that these variables have a significant impact on the farmers' net revenue per hectare.The study carries out a marginal impact analysis of increasing temperature and changing precipitation across the four seasons. In addition, it examines the impact of uniform climate scenarios on farmers' net revenue per hectare. Additionally, it analyzes the net revenue impact of predicted climate scenarios from three models for the years 2050 and 2100. In general, the results indicate that increasing temperature and decreasing precipitation are both damaging to Ethiopian agriculture. Although the analysis did not incorporate the carbon fertilization effect, the role of technology, or the change in prices for the future, significant information for policy-making can be extracted.Publication Potential Impact of Climate Change on Resilience and Livelihoods in Mixed Crop-Livestock Systems in East Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-02-01)Climate-induced livelihood transitions in the agricultural systems of Africa are increasingly likely. A recent study by Jones and Thornton (2009) points to the possibility of such climate-induced livelihood transitions in the mixed crop-livestock rainfed arid-semiarid systems of Africa. These mixed systems cover over one million square kilometers of farmland in West Africa, Eastern Africa, and Southeastern Africa. Their characteristically scant rainfall usually causes crop failure in one out of every six growing seasons and is thus already marginal for crop production. Under many projected climate futures, these systems will become drier and even more marginal for crop production. This will greatly increase the risk of cropping and among the several possible coping and adaptation mechanisms, (e.g. totally abandoning farming, diversification of income-generating activities such as migration and off-farm employment, etc.) agro-pastoralists may alter the relative emphasis that they currently place on the crop and livestock components of the farming system in favor of livestock. There has been only limited analysis on what such climate induced transitions might look like, but it is clear that the implications could be profound in relation to social, environmental, economic and political effects at local and national levels. This study sought to identify areas in the mixed crop-livestock systems in arid and semi-arid Africa where climate change could compel currently sedentary farmers to abandon cropping and to turn to nomadic pastoralism as a livelihood strategy, using East Africa as a case study. While the current study found no direct evidence for the hypothesized extensification across semiarid areas in East Africa, it is clear that systems are in transition with associated changes not necessarily climate driven but linked to broader socio-economic trends. Not surprisingly, many of the households in the piloted sites face a wide array of problems including poverty, food insecurity and inadequate diets which will be aggravated by the looming risks posed by climate change.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Making Climate Finance Work in Agriculture(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-06)This discussion paper was produced as a background documentfor the 2016 FAO State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA) report. It was produced through desk research and analysis of existing agricultural and climate finance literature. Moreover, qualitative interviews with key experts representing different stakeholder groups in the agriculture, climate, and financial sectors were conducted to inform the potential opportunities and innovations that should be further explored to make climate finance work for agriculture. Finally, a collection of supporting case studies were provided by different stakeholders to showcase some of the most successful and innovative examples already being implemented in the climate finance community.It is important to note that this is a discussion paper that aims to explore the intersection between climate and agriculture finance by generating dialogue. Hence, the paper explores a relatively new field and proposes innovative interventions that either are being tested or could be tested to increase the leverage of private capital and strengthen the links between financial institutions on the one hand and smallholder farmers and SMEs on the other. The objective of the paper is to generate discussion around this topic and, therefore, no blanket recommendations or descriptive interventions are proposed. A growing population and changing diets are driving up the demand for food. Production is struggling to keep up as crop yields level off in many parts of the world, ocean health declines, and natural resources— including soils, water and biodiversity—are stretched dangerously thin. Climate change is critically interrelated with agriculture. On the one hand, agriculture is extremely vulnerable to climate change. This paper proposes three different avenues to use climate finance to achieve this goal: a) Designing and adapting innovative mechanisms to leverage additional sources of capital, from both public and private sources, that can be directed towards climate smartinvestments in the agriculture sector. b) Identifying entry points for directing climate finance into agriculture and for linking FIs to smallholders and agricultural SMEs, including through capacity building and technical assistance. c) Providing technical assistance to increase investments in agriculture. Finally, this paper presents several suggestions to contribute to the achievement of the ideas presented in this paper, including the need for increased knowledge on innovative financial instruments and mechanisms, bridging information gaps, identifying opportunities, promoting dialogue and cooperation, and designing an action plan to move this agenda forward.Publication Migration and Urbanization in Post-Apartheid South Africa(Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank, 2020-06)Although Africa has experienced rapid urbanization in recent decades, little is known about the process of urbanization across the continent. This paper exploits a natural experiment, the abolition of South African pass laws, to explore how exogenous population shocks affect the spatial distribution of economic activity. Under apartheid, black South Africans were severely restricted in their choice of location, and many were forced to live in homelands. Following the abolition of apartheid they were free to migrate. Given a migration cost in distance, a town nearer to the homelands will receive a larger inflow of people than a more distant town following the removal of mobility restrictions. Drawing upon this exogenous variation, this study examines the effect of migration on urbanization in South Africa. While it is found that on average there is no endogenous adjustment of population location to a positive population shock, there is heterogeneity in the results. Cities that start off larger do grow endogenously in the wake of a migration shock, while rural areas that start off small do not respond in the same way. This heterogeneity indicates that population shocks lead to an increase in urban relative to rural populations. Overall, the evidence suggests that exogenous migration shocks can foster urbanization in the medium run.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Land Redistribution in South Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-05-28)This paper provides an overview of land reform in South Africa from 1994 to 2011, with the focus on the land redistribution. The government policies and associated implementation since 1994 have not generated expected social and economic results for a number of reasons. Even where land has been transferred, it appears to have had minimal impact on the livelihoods of beneficiaries, largely because of inappropriate project design, a lack of necessary support services and shortages of working capital, leading to widespread underutilization of land. There is no evidence to suggest that land reform has led to improvements in agricultural efficiency, income, employment or economic growth. Therefore, the current approach, based on acquisition of land through the open market, minimal support to new farmers, and bureaucratic imposition of production models loosely based on existing commercial operators, is unlikely to transform the rural economy and lift people out of poverty. The paper argues that there are two important missing aspects in the land reform program. First, there is an absence of any viable small-farmer path to development, which could enable the millions of households residing in the communal areas and on commercial farms to expand their own production and accumulate wealth and resources in an incremental manner. Making this happen would require radical restructuring of existing farm units to create family-size farms, more realistic farm planning, appropriate support from a much-reformed state agricultural service, and a much greater role for beneficiaries in the design and implementation of their own projects. Second, what is clearly missing from the governance tradition is the sustained focus on implementation, resource mobilization, and timely policy adjustment. Much more will be required for land reform program to contribute significantly to economic growth and to the redistribution of wealth and opportunities to the majority of the population.Publication Taxes, Spending, and Equity: International Patterns and Lessons for Developing Countries(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-11-17)Taxes and public spending underpin the basic administration of government and finance the human capital and infrastructure investments needed for economic growth. They can also have a significant and immediate impact on poverty and inequality. The question of how public finance can support longer-term growth objectives while promoting equity has become even more important in recent years, given the high fiscal deficits and debt levels most countries emerged with in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. These included the increasing cost of debt and the need to restart environmentally sustainable growth while helping households address the learning losses and other social scars caused by the pandemic. This paper examines the global evidence on which households pay which taxes and who benefits from what spending, and critically, the net effect on different households across the income distribution. The aim is to identify the patterns and lessons that emerge for designing progressive fiscal policies. A global dataset of 96 countries is assembled, spanning all regions of the world and all national income levels, grounded in the Commitment to Equity (CEQ) approach to fiscal incidence.