Climate Change and Agriculture: Subsistence Farmers’ Response to Extreme Heat

By F. M. Arag'on, F. Oteiza, Juan Pablo Rud Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University, Department of Statistical Science, Ucl Institute of Education, R. Holloway, U. O. London, Institute of Advanced Studies. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2019

215 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper examines how subsistence farmers respond to extreme heat. Using microdata from Peruvian households, we find that high temperatures reduce agricultural productivity, increase area planted, and change crop mix. These findings are consistent with farmers using input adjustments as a short-term mechanism to attenuate the effect of extreme heat on output. This response seems to complement other coping strategies, such as selling livestock, but exacerbates the drop in yields, a standard measure of agricultural productivity. Using our estimates, we show that accounting for land adjustments is important to quantify damages associated with climate change. (JEL O12, O13, Q11, Q12, Q15, Q54)

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

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