Abstract
We integrate the combined agricultural production effects of forecasted changes in CO2, temperature and precipitation into a multi-regional, country-wide partial equilibrium positive mathematical programming model. By conducting a meta-analysis of 2103 experimental observations from 259 agronomic studies we estimate production functions relating yields to CO2 concentration and temperature for 55 crops. We apply the model to simulate climate change in Israel based on 15 agricultural production regions. Downscaled projections for CO2 concentration, temperature and precipitation were derived from three general circulation models and four representative concentration pathways, showing temperature increase and precipitation decline throughout most of the county during the future periods 2041–2060 and 2061–2080. Given the constrained regional freshwater and non-freshwater quotas, farmers will adapt by partial abandonment of agriculture lands, increasing focus on crops grown in controlled environments at the expense of open-field and rain-fed crops. Both agricultural production and prices decline, leading to reduced agricultural revenues; nevertheless, production costs reduce at a larger extent such that farming profits increase. As total consumer surplus also augments, overall social welfare rises. We find that this outcome is reversed if the positive fertilization effects of increased CO2 concentrations are overlooked.
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Notes
The effect of precipitation was already included in previous versions of the VALUE model (Kan and Rapaport-Rom 2012). For the present application, we updated precipitation forecasts for the periods under consideration.
We provide here a brief description of the data and meta-analysis; for a complete description see Zelingher (2017).
Due to its dry climate, croplands in Israel are not cultivated specifically as pasturelands for grazing, and livestock feed is mostly based on imported grains and locally produced fodder crops, which are incorporated in the model. Forests, centrally managed by the Jewish National Fund, are typically grown for various ecosystem services on lands with topography and soil quality that are unsuitable for crop production, and are not considered by MOARD as agricultural lands (Dr. Yael Kachel, MOARD, personal communication, July 2018). Thus, our analysis for the case of Israel excludes pasturelands and forestlands; nevertheless, these activities should be considered as substitutes to croplands in economic studies of climate-change agricultural effects in other regions (e.g., in Brazil; Alkimim et al. 2015).
“Future climate” refers to the conditions during the periods 2041–2060 and 2061–2080 in Israel as derived from the analysis of the GCMs in Sect. 2.2.
For six crops in the VALUE model (i.e., Other field crops, Other fruits, Other vegetables, Persimmon, Pomegranate, and Sweet potato), we could not retrieve a sufficient number of agronomic experiments to estimate a production function including all three climatic variables under investigation. For these crops, changes in future production were estimated using changes in precipitation only.
An “experiment” is thus defined here as a comparison between crops grown under identical conditions with the exception of CO2 and temperature levels.
GCMs were originally designed to simulate the earth’s climate. When using downscaled climate data, it is important to recall that the original information was generated at a coarse spatial resolution and did not take into account local topography or land cover patchiness, assuming homogeneity within each grid cell.
Therefore, projected temperatures and precipitation assume in our analysis 12 possible values (3 GCMs × 4 RCPs).
Except for the southern Negev region for which a radius of 50 km was used.
1 dunam = 1000 m2.
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Funding was provided by the Center for Agricultural Economic Research, Department of Environmental Economics and Management, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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Zelingher, R., Ghermandi, A., De Cian, E. et al. Economic Impacts of Climate Change on Vegetative Agriculture Markets in Israel. Environ Resource Econ 74, 679–696 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-019-00340-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-019-00340-z