Apple Farmers' Adaptive Behavior To Climate Change

Climate change that affects human survival and development is a major challenge for all countries in the world.Agriculture is an intersection industry between natural reproduction and economic reproduction,which is based on crop growth.In this process,climate and environment factors such as sunlight,heat,water and soil,are the essential factors for agricultural production.Climate change results in the obvious spatial-temporal characteristics change of sunlight,heat,temperature,humidity and wind,which has an all-directional and multi-level influence on agricultural production,and not only threatens food safety in China and even in the world,but intensifies the fluctuation of farmers' income.Adaptation has been the vital way to solve the climate change.In China,climate change has negatively affected the development of apple industry and apple growers' income.Apple growers are the micro body of the apple industry to adapt to climate change,and their adaptive behavior has been the micro foundation to improve their adaptive capacity and promote the sustainable development of apple industry.Current study on farmers' adaptive behavior to climate change is too general and fails to dig deep into this problem by focusing on farmers who plant perennial and high value agricultural crops.This dissertation aims to solve this problem.Using a large set of first-hand household-level survey data from apple farmers in 8 apple base counties located in Shaanxi where it is the main region of apple production in China,this dissertation makes an in depth study of the characteristics of apple farmers' adaptive behavior to climate change.This dissertation consists of three parts,and the main content of each part is as follow:The first part briefly introduces the main purpose,the main research method and the framework.It elaborates the research background,the purpose and the significance of study on adaptive behavior of apple farmers to climate change;then it makes a thorough and objective review of studies on the impact of climate change on agriculture and adaptation of agriculture and farmers,and specifies the necessity and importance of a quantitative study on apple farmers' adaptive behavior to climate change;then it summarizes the method,the data and technical routine,and finally mentions the originality of this study.The second part including Chapter 2 is a theoretical analysis of apple farmers' adaptive behavior to climate change.Firstly,it gives the definition of apple farmers' adaptive behavior to climate change based on definitions on terms like apple farmers,climate change and adaptation,and theories like uncertainty and individual decision-making behavior.Secondly,it elaborates on the features and characteristics of apple farmers' adaptive behavior,and exogenous and endogenous systems and factors which have impacts on the choice of apple farmers' adaptation.And with that,a theoretical framework of apple farmers' adaptive behavior to climate change can be established.Accordingly,the theoretical analysis shows that climate change is major risk factor to affect apple farmers' net revenue;climate change and adaptive capacity are the exogenous and endogenous factors that influence adaptation of apple farmers,respectively;different adaptive behavior of apple farmers are efficient.The third part including Chapter 3,Chapter 4,Chapter 5,Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 is an empirical analysis of apple farmers' adaptive behavior to climate change based on the apple farmers' survey data.Chapter 3 is a descriptive analysis on the features of climate change and apple farmers' adaptive behavior to climate change by using the statistical data and the survey data of apple farmers in 8 apple base counties in Shaanxi.Chapter 4 is an empirical analysis on the impact of annual and seasonal climate change on apple farmers' net revenue by the Ricardian model.Chapter 5 is an empirical analysis on adaptive capacity of apple farmers to climate change based on the sustainable livelihood framework and the entropy weight method.Chapter 6 is an empirical analysis on the impact of climate change and adaptive capacity on apple farmers' adaptive behavior by the Double-Hurdle model.Chapter 7 is an empirical analysis on the efficiency of different adaptive behavior of apple farmers by endogenous switching regression model.The main empirical results are as follows:1.The descriptive analysis of the features of climate change and adaptive behavior of apple farmers in Shaanxi show that: firstly,the trend of climate change is obvious,and this trend shows different features on different stages of apple growing season(pre-flowering stage,flowering,fruit-set and fruit developmental stage,fruit developmental stage and post-harvest stage).Secondly,the layout of apple industry has a trend with moving westward and expanding northward from plain area to hilly gully region,which has a close relationship with climate change.Finally,the levels of different adaptive behavior adopting by apple farmers are very low.For the climate change on flowering,fruit-set and fruit developmental stage,apple farmers choose the smoking in apple orchard and using antifreeze pesticide to adapt with 44.34% and 38.01% respectively;for the climate change on fruit developmental stage,apple farmers take covering black plastic film mulch and planting artificial grass to adapt with only 18.25% and 15.08%,respectively;irrigation is one of adaptive measures for apple farmers,but the percent is low,at just 12.97%.2.The empirical analysis of the impact of climate change on apple farmer' net revenue show that: firstly,climate factors and change have significant effects on apple farmers' net revenue.In terms of annual,rainfall and its change affect significantly net revenue of apple farmers.In terms of seasonal,temperature in winter and summer have opposite influence on net revenue while rainfall in spring affects positively net revenue,and rainfall in winter and autumn negatively affect net revenue;temperature change in spring has positive influence on net revenue while in summer and autumn have negative effect on net revenue;rainfall change in summer positively affects net revenue while in winter and spring affect negatively on net revenue.3.The empirical analysis of apple farmers' adaptive capacity to climate change show that: firstly,adaptive capacity of apple farmers have obvious difference in different regions.Adaptive capacity of apple farmers in Yan'an city is higher than Weinan and Xianyang.Secondly,each constitute of adaptive capacity of apple farmers show differences in different regions.Each capital of apple farmers in Yan'an city is higher than Weinan and Xianyang.Thirdly,the level of adaptive capacity of apple farmers is low,with low adaptive capacity farmers accounted for more than 60%.There are many important factors that affect apple farmers' adaptive capacity,such as family labor,education level,labor ability and frequencies of technical training,and so on.4.The empirical analysis of climate change and adaptive capacity on apple farmers' adaptive behavior show that: firstly,adaptive capacity is the key endogenous factor to affect adaptive behavior of apple farmers,and its constitutes,like human capital,natural capital,financial capital,physical capital and social capital,have significantly different influence on different adaptive behavior of apple farmers.Secondly,climate factors and change are key exogenous factors that affect different adaptive behavior of apple farmers.Finally,the impact of market conditions,properties of crops and public services in village on different adaptive behavior of apple farmers have significant differences.5.The empirical analysis of the efficiency of different adaptive behavior of apple farmers to climate change show that: firstly,the impacts of adaptive behavior of apple farmers on apple output and output risk are significant,and they have obvious difference in different adaptive behavior.Under counterfactual assumptions,in apple trees flowering,smoking in apple orchard increase output by 2.29% and decrease output risk by 16.46% while taking antifreeze pesticide increase output by 1.93% and decrease output risk by 15.29%;in apple growing period,covering black plastic film mulch increase output by 3.89% and decrease output risk by 0.66% while planting artificial grass increase output by 4.36% and decrease output risk by 6.31%;in the whole apple production period,irrigation can increase output by 9.95% and decrease output risk by 8.15%.Secondly,choices of different adaptive behavior to climate change by apple farmers satisfies the rule of cost and benefit,and are efficient.But the net revenue from different adaptive behavior is obviously different,in which the net revenue by irrigation has the highest value than adaptive behavior in apple growing period and apple trees flowering.Finally,the results of the whole dissertation illustrate that climate change is the key exogenous risk factor on apple farmers' net revenue,climate change and adaptive capacity have significant influence on adaptive behavior of apple farmers,and different adaptive behavior taking by apple farmers are efficient.However,due to exogenous and endogenous constraints,the level of adaptation from apple farmers is pretty low.Therefore,in order to better improve the enthusiasm of apple farmers' adaptation to climate change and better promote the sustainable development of the regional apple industry,it is necessary to solve the exogenous constraints by expanding suitable adaptive measure for crops characteristics,developing farmers' cooperative,building village informatization,constructing agricultural irrigation infrastructure and guiding the improvement of inefficient orchard,and endogenous constraints by improving different capital of apple farmers.