Grain Growers' Adaptation To Climate Change And Its Effectivenesses

In recent years,due to the influence of nature and human activities,the global climate is constantly warming,and extreme weather events occur frequently.China is one of the sensitive areas of climate change.Blue Paper on Climate Change in China pointes out that from 1901 to 2017,the average annual surface temperature in China increases by 0.24°C every 10 years,and the rate at which the temperature rises is higher than the average rate of the global during the same period.At the same time,extreme weather events such as high temperatures and waterlogging caused by climate warming occure more frequently than before.Climate change is closely related to agricultural production.Climate change may increase agricultural risks.Whether managers and agricultural producers can respond to climate change and its impact is the key to mitigate the negative impacts of climate change and to achieve profitability.The Chinese government pays great attention to the adaptation to climate change,and issues relevant policies.If the agricultural sectors want to improve its ability to cope with climate change,they should focus on micro-farmers,because farmers are the basic unit of agricultural production.Therefore,the researches on farmers' adaptation to climate change are important in real life.Regardless of how science and technology develop,grain production is still directly affected by climate change.The Chinese government has always attached importance to grain security issues and regards food security as the basic economic work.Therefore,the researches on grain growers' adaptation to climate change are important.At present,the literature are concerned about grain growers' adaptation to climate change,as grain growers' adaptation to climate change directly affects the results of the assessment.So,as grain growers,how to adapt to climate change through appropriate measures? What are the characteristics of grain growers' adaptation to climate change? What are the representative adaptation measures? How grain growers' adaptation affects grain production?The literature based on farmers' survey data indicates that grain growers have adaptation to climate change.However,few literature distinguishs between grain growers' adaptation in the long-term and grain growers' adaptation in the short-term.In the long run,farmers can adequately cope with climate change.In the short term,the time and measures adopted by farmers are relatively limited.This paper examines the adaptive behavior of grain growers from both long-term and short-term perspectives.On one hand,this paper examines the long-term adaptation of grain growers to climate change,analyzes the characteristics of specific adaptive measures,and tries to identify the representative adaptive measures.On the other hand,this paper examines the short-term adaptation of grain growers to extreme weather events.This paper takes grain growers as the research subject,and discusses grain growers' adaptation to climate change and its impact on grain input and production.In particular,firstly,the concept of climate change and adaptation are defined and the literature on farmers' adaptation is reviewed.Secondly,this paper examines the change trends of temperature,precipitation and agro-meteorological disasters in China's major grain-producing provinces.On this basis,we conduct field surveys to obtain cross-sectional data of grain farmers,and analyze grain growers' climate change perceptions and adaptive behaviors.In theory,the internal mechanism of grain growers' adaptive behavior selection is discussed.Thirdly,based on the annual average temperature from 1986 to 2014,total annual precipitation of the meteorological stations from 1986 to 2014,and grain growers' survey data,this paper uses the binary selection model to analyze the impact of climate change on grain growers' specific adaptation.According to the model estimation results,we identify representative adaptive measures.This paper uses grain growers' survey cross-section data to analyze the impact of grain growers' perceptions of the frequency of extreme weather events on their conservation tillage decisions,to clarify the role of the frequency of extreme weather events in grain growers' long-term adaptive behavior.Next,this paper focuses on the grain growers' short-term adaptation to extreme weather events.Based on Hubei rice households survey data from 2003 to 2011,the temperature and precipitation data of Hubei meteorological stations,this paper uses the fixed effect model to analyze whether the factors input of rice growers is affected by extreme weather events.Then,this paper uses endogenous switching regression model to analyze the impact of grain growers' adaptation on grain yield,and uses endogenous switching regression model and a treatment effects model to analyze the influence of grain growers' adaptation on their fertilizer input.Finally,based on the research conclusions,this paper proposes policy recommendations.Based on the above,the conclusions obtained in this paper are as follows:(1)From 1986 to 2014,the annual average temperature of China's major grain producing areas showes a clear upward trend,and the total annual accumulated precipitation does not change significantly.In China's major grain-producing areas,on average,the percentage of agricultural disaster area in the total affected area is 51.93%,that is,about 1/2 of the affected area is reduced by 30% or more per year.Flood and drought disasters have always been the main meteorological disasters affecting agricultural production in China.(2)Grain growers have a more obvious perception of temperature changes,and 77.7% of grain growers believe that temperatures have increased significantly in recent years,which is consistent with the trend of objective temperature data.Grain growers' perceptions of changes in precipitation are different.Nearly 50% of grain growers believe that precipitation has increased in recent years,and 21.96% of grain growers believe that precipitation is decreasing.In the long run,grain growers' adaptation to climate change is widespread.According to the survey data,79.6% of grain growers adopt adaptive measures.Among them,replenishing seedlings,changing seed varieties,adjusting agricultural time,and adjusting irrigation are the preferred measures for grain growers.The proportion of grain growers are respectively 41.58%,35.34%,34.26%,33.44%.Grain growers tend to adopt 1 to 4 adaptive measures,and the proportion of grain growers are respectively 25.08%,16.83%,12.15% and 12.82%.(3)The impact of climate change on grain growers' farmland management measures is robust.Specifically,under the condition that other variables are constant,there is a ?positive U-shaped? relationship between the annual average temperature and grain growers' farmland management measures.The total precipitation increases by 1%,the probability of farmers adopting farmland management measures is reduced by 0.2.%.The impact of climate change on grain growers' replacement of seed varieties is relatively robust.Farmland management measures reflect the adaptability of farmers to climate change.The reason is that farmland management measures need more labor force and less capital investment.According to the model estimation results,the grain growers' family labor endowment has a positive impact on their adoption of farmland management measures,but the impact on the engineering measures is not significant.(4)To a certain extent,the frequency of extreme weather events affects grain growers' conservation tillage decisions.The binary variable of grain growers' perception of the frequency of extreme weather events has no significant impact on their conservation tillage decisions.When we identify the indicators perceived by grain growers,we find that compared with grain growers who believe that extreme weather events occur frequently,grain growers who believe that extreme weather events occur in 6-8 years are not inclined to choose conservation tillage.(5)The factor input of rice growers is affected by extreme weather events.Under the same conditions of other variables,compared with the year when no waterlogging occurred,the average level of middle and mechanical investment of rice growers in the waterlogging disaster year is lower,but the level of labor input is higher.However,with the increase in the degree of waterlogging disaster,the middle and labor input of rice growers have decreased significantly.(6)Grain growers' adaptation can promote grain production.Under the counterfactual hypothesis,when the unused grain growers adopt adaptive measures,the average grain yield per mu will increase by 1.02 kg.Based on the sampled data,the test results also show that under the counterfactual hypothesis,when the wheat growers adopting the adaptive measures do not choose to adapt,the average wheat yield per mu will decrease by 0.208 kg.When the non-adoption behavior of the corn growers change their behavior,the average corn production will increase by 1.663 kg per mu.In addition,grain growers adopting adaptive measures tend to invest more in fertilizers.From the perspective of marginal impact,grain growers with adaptive behaviors have a 2.4% higher fertilizer input per unit area than those who do not.Based on the above research conclusions,this paper proposes the following policy recommendations:(1)All levels of government should improve the early warning mechanism for agricultural meteorological disasters.Once a meteorological disaster occurs,the relevant government department should promptly launch a contingency plan to provide appropriate material,technical or financial support.(2)With the market demand,the seed industry sector should increase the resistance of seeds to improve the ability of seeds to adapt to climate change.(3)Relevant departments should encourage new agricultural producers to participate in the construction of small and micro farmland water conservancy facilities,and provide them with incentive mechanism and financial support.(4)Relevant departments continue to promote the technology of conservation tillage.Adjust the strategy appropriately during the promotion process,according to the specific conditions of different regions and the characteristics of farmers' families.The possible innovations in this paper are as follows:(1)Innovation in research methods.Firstly,this paper uses endogenous switching regression model and a treatment effects model to analyze the impact of farmers' adaptation.Grain growers' adaptation is a selection process,endogenous switching regression model can address the sample selection problem.This paper employs an endogenous switching regression model to analyze the impact of grain growers' adaption on grain production and the agricultural environment.Although the endogenous switching regression model can address the endogeneity problem caused by unobservable variables,it can not evaluate the marginal effect.Treatment effects model can address the endogenous problem and evaluate the marginal effect.Based on this,this paper further employs a treatment effects model to analyze the marginal impact of grain growers' adaption on the agricultural environment.Secondly,the existing literature analyzes the impact of extreme weather events on farmers' short-term adaptive behavior based on farmers' cross-section or short panel data.Few literature use farmers' long panel data to analyze this issue.In fact,the panel fixed effect model can solve the missing variable problem,making the model estimation more accurately.Different from the existing literature,this paper uses the panel data of rice growers in Hubei from 2003 to 2011,and uses the panel fixed effect model to analyze whether the input of rice growers is affected by extreme weather events.(2)Innovation in research content.Farmers' short-term adaptation usually reflects the limited adaptation.In contrast,farmers' long-term adaptation can reflect the fully adaptation.In the long run,farmers have more time to adjust strategies and behaviors.The existing literature mainly examines the impact of farmers' short-term adaptation to extreme weather events on crop yield.There is a little literature that analyzes the impact of farmers' long-term adaptation on crop yield.Based on the perspective of long-term,this paper empirically tests the impact of farmers' long-term adaptation on crop yield.(3)Innovation of research indicators.Based on the cross-sectional data,the exsited literature analyzes the impact of climate change on farmers' adaptive behaviors.In their researches,the metrics of climate factors are the temperature or precipitation of the year.Although regional climate differences can be regarded as climate change,they cannot completely reflect changes in climate factors over time.To reflect the change of climate factors in time,this paper uses the average annual temperature and average annual precipitation from 1986 to 2014 to measure the climatic factors,and to analyze their impact on farmers' farmland management measures,engineering measures and the replacement of seed varieties.In addition,the existing literature usually uses binary variable to measure the occurrence of extreme weather events,but this method of measurement cannot reflect the frequency or extent of extreme weather events.Different from the existing literature,this paper constructs the farmers' perception of the frequency of extreme weather events,the indexes of waterlogging disaster and integrated indexes of high temperature disaster.