The Farmer's Adaptive Behavior Of Grain Production In The Context Of Climate Change

The impact of and adaptation to climate change on agriculture have become one of the most important research fields in the international academic community.With the long-term trend of climate change and the frequent occurrence of extreme weather events,the food security and farmers' grain income are seriously threatened in China.As the basic unit of agricultural production and the principal part of decision-making,farmers' productive decisions and adaptive decision play crucial roles to address climate change.However,it is still unclear of the current research conclusion on the impact of climate change on China's grain production,and the government's adaptation policy also lacks targeted guidance in helping farmers to cope with climate change.In the actual agricultural production,what measures will farmers take to deal with climate change? What is the impact mechanism of adopting adaptive measures? Can farmers take corresponding measures to reduce the risk of climate change on food production and increase the grain net income of farmers? Therefore,it is undoubtedly significant to analyze the impact of climate change on China's grain production and to study farmers' adaptive behaviors to climate change.The Huang-Huai-Hai area is China's main grain producing area,and the temperature in the area has been rising and natural disasters occurred frequently for nearly 30 years.Therefore,based on meteorological data,agricultural production data and large-scale survey dataset of farm households across the Huang-Huai-Hai region,this study first documented the historical trends of climate change and grain production,and summarized the types and characteristics of adaptive measures that farm households adopted in the Huang-Huai-Hai region.Secondly,empirically analyzed the impact of climate change on grain yield,and calculated the long-term climate change and extreme weather events on different growth stages of wheat and maize.Thirdly,according to the classification of adaptive measures,the endogenous switching regression model is employed to empirically analyze the determinants of engineering adaptive measures and non-engineering adaptive measures(water-saving technical measures,farm management measures and risk management measures)to reveal the decision behavior of farm housholds to cope with climate change.And finally the effectiveness of adaptation behavior for farm households is assessed by using the indicators of grain yield,grain production risk and grain net income.The main four aspects of research results show that:First,the overall trends of climate change and grain production across the Huang-Huai-Hai region show that: i)The annual average temperature has shown a statistically increasing,especially the rapid warming in the past 30 years,and the trend of winter warming is the most obvio us climate change in the four seasons.In contrast,the trend of annual average precipitation is not obvious but with large interannual variation.ii)The increasing of grain production mainly dependent on the growth of per unit area yield of grain with the declining trend of sown area.Second,the results of impacting of climate change on grain yield indicate that: i)The impacts of long-term climate change on wheat and maize yields vary from different crop growth stages.Specically,the proper increasing temperature in winter will have a positive effect on the increase of winter wheat yield,while the increasing temperature in spring will lead to the decrease of wheat yield.The increasing temperature will significantly improve corn yield during the concurrent period,while the rising temperature will reduce corn production during the reproductive growth period.ii)Compared with long-term climate change,the occurrence of extreme weather events has a greater negative impact on wheat and maize yield.iii)There is significant spatial heterogeneity in the grain yield,that is,that heterogeneity is not only influenced by farmland characteristics,farm household characteristics,and the factors of production input,but also affected by the differences of the socio-economic conditions of village.Third,the results of farmers' adaptive decision show that: i)Farm household would adopt different types of adaptive measures to cope with climate change,and the adoption proportion in the disaster year is higher tha n that in the normal year.37.3% of engineering measures is adopted,and the proportion of non-engineering measures from high to low is water-saving technology(87.5%),farmland management(55.3%)and risk management measures(40.1%).ii)Access to public climate warning and prevention information,technical or physical support,and production technology training play active roles of farmers adopt adaptive measures,which revealing that policies and services supported by government are the key to improving farmers' ability to adapt to climate change.iii)The wealth of farm household has a positive impact on the adoption of adaptive measures.The poor farm households are difficult to adopt adaptive measures for lacking of funds,and their grain production is more vulnerable with long-term climate change and extreme weather events.Therefore,the government's technical and capital support is especially important for poor farmers to improve their ability to adapt to climate change.iv)Expanding the cultivated area and realizing agricultural scale management are not only help farmers to adopt adaptive measures,but also have a significant positive effect on increasing grain production,reducing production risks and increasing grain net income.Fourth,the results of effectiveness of farmer 's adaptive behavior show that: i)Engineering adaptation measures significantly mitigated the loss of crop yield and even increase crop yield under long-term climate change and extreme weather events,but most of value of crop yield was offset by rising factor input costs.This indicates that rising crop yield could not proportionally increase farmers' net income.The input costs will be too high and grain net income will fall if farmers invest in engineering-based adaptation measures with adding production factors.ii)Water-saving technologies can be adopted to increase grain yield,reduce production risks and ensure farmers' grain net income in response to drought.And the grain yield and net income varies from different types of water-saving technologies.Compared with the traditional water-saving technologies,the farmer-based and community-based water-saving technologies have the greater effectiveness of increasing grain yield and net income.iii)Farmland management measures can be adopted to effectively reduce the negative impact of climate change on grain production and effectively increase the grain net income of farmers.iv)Farmers' participation in agricultural insurance is an effectively adaptive measure of risk management measures.Participating in agricultural insurance can significantly increase the net income of farmers' grain and increase the enthusiasm of farmers.Based on the above research results,this paper proposes the following policy recommendations: i)The government should pay more attention to the impact of and adaptation to extreme weather events on grain production when formulating adaptation policies related to climate change in agriculture.ii)The government should accelerate the establishment and improvement of service systems for coping with disasters,and incorporate public services that adapt to climate change into the national public promotion system.And the reasonable technical,material and financial support should be provided to encourage farmers to adopt adaptative measures.iii)The engineering irrigation and drainage infrastructure should be invested and managed,farm management measures should be encouraged to choose to deal with climate change for easy-to-use and low-cost characteristics,the advanced water-saving technologies could be vigorously developed to cope with drought disaster,and at the same time,a reasonable subsidy mechanism of agricultural insurance should be established to improve farmers' ability to cope with climate risks.iv)The domestic agricultural supply-side reform should be reinforced to reduce input cost and improve effectiveness in agriculture,which is substituting organic for chemical fertiliser inputs.v)It is important to promote the development of rural collective economy.And it is imperative to accelerate the large-scale operation of agriculture and promote the process of agricultural modernization.