Will African Agriculture Survive Climate Change?

By P. Kurukulasuriya, R. Mendelsohn, R. Hassan, J. Benhin, T. Deressa, M. Diop, H. M. Eid, K. Fosu, G. A. Gbetibouo, Suman L. Jain and 11 more. 2006

599 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Measurement of the likely magnitude of the economic impact of climate change on African agriculture has been a challenge. Using data from a survey of more than 9,000 farmers across 11 African countries, a cross-sectional approach estimates how farm net revenues are affected by climate change compared with current mean temperature. Revenues fall with warming for dryland crops (temperature elasticity of -1.9) and livestock (-5.4), whereas revenues rise for irrigated crops (elasticity of 0.5), which are located in relatively cool parts of Africa and are buffered by irrigation from the effects of warming. At first, warming has little net aggregate effect as the gains for irrigated crops offset the losses for dryland crops and livestock. Warming, however, will likely reduce dryland farm income immediately. The final effects will also depend on changes in precipitation, because revenues from all farm types increase with precipitation. Because irrigated farms are less sensitive to climate, where water is available, irrigation is a practical adaptation to climate change in Africa.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, General Agricultural and Biological Sciences, Soil Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6046a6daf6dfa5cfa4834823764879a2bd5a2ea9

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Citations in the corpus

Crop switching as a strategy for adapting to climate change (2008, background): “As outlined in Kurukulasuriya et al. (2006) , although monthly climate measures were available, individual months are highly correlated with neighboring months.”
Adapting agriculture to climate change in Kenya: household strategies and determinants. (2013, background): “The development challenges that many African countries face are already considerable, and climate change will only add to these through losses in farm profits (Kurukulasuriya et al., 2006).”
A Ricardian Analysis of the Distribution of Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture across Agro-Ecological Zones in Africa (2008, unknown): “Lowland semi-arid areas may also not be a good place for crops (Kurukulasuriya et al. 2006).”
A Ricardian Analysis of the Impact of Climate Change on African Cropland (2007, background): “A total of 9064 surveys of individual farmers were analyzed (Table 1). An earlier analysis of this data revealed that African crop net revenues are sensitive to climate ( Kurukulasuriya et al., 2006 ).”
Soils and food sufficiency. A review (2011, background): “Kurukulasuriya et al. (2006) conducted a survey of 9000 farmers across 11 countries in SSA.”
The impact of climate change on China's agriculture. (2009, background): “Even with adaptation, studies applying the Ricardian approach in Africa (Kurukulasuriya and Mendelsohn, 2008; Kurukulasuriya et al., 2006) and South America (Seo and Mendelsohn, 2008) suggest that warming will reduce farm net revenues.”
The Use of Cross-Sectional Analysis to Measure Climate Impacts on Agriculture: Theory and Evidence (2017, background): “Thus the studies find that warming will cause more damage to rain-fed cropland than irrigated cropland in the United States (Schlenker, Hanemann, and Fisher 2005), Africa (Kurukulasuriya et al. 2006), and China (Wang et al. 2009).”
Adaptation to climate change in Sub-Saharan agriculture: assessing the evidence and rethinking the drivers (2014, methodology): “For instance, dry land through SSA is under risk; cropland with irrigation support located around the Nile or highlands of Kenya have some benefits from warming; drier countries such as Egypt, Niger or Senegal benefit for the livestock from rainfall increase (Kurukulasuriya et al., 2006).”
South African crop farming and climate change: An economic assessment of impacts (2008, methodology): “In order to capture this effect, a more complete analysis should include models for local labour markets as well as land productivity (Kurukulasuriya et al., 2006).”
The Light and the Heat: Productivity Co-Benefits of Energy-Saving Technology (2019, background): “While the effect of rising temperatures on agriculture has been studied in depth by recent work (Deschênes and Greenstone, 2007; Guiteras, 2009; Kala et al., 2012; Kurukulasuriya et al., 2006; Lobell et al., 2011), impacts on industrial productivity remain relatively unexplored.”