Publication - Journal Article Climate change effects on agriculture: Economic responses to biophysical shocks

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 111, iss. 9, pp. 3274-3279, 2013

Gerald C. Nelson, Hugo Valin, Ronald D. Sands, Petr Havlik, Helal Ahammad, Delphine Deryng, Joshua Elliott, Shinichiro Fujimori, Tomoko Hasegawa, Edwina Heyhoe, Page Kyle, Martin von Lampe, Hermann Lotze-Campen, Daniel Mason d’Croz, Hans van Meijl, Dominique van der Mensbrugghe, Christoph Müller, Alexander Popp, Richard Robertson, Sherman Robinson, Erwin Schmid, Christoph Schmitz, Andrzej Tabeau, Dirk Willenbockel

Significance Plausible estimates of climate change impacts on agriculture require integrated use of climate, crop, and economic models. We investigate the contribution of economic models to uncertainty in this impact chain. In the nine economic models included, the direction of management intensity, area, consumption, and international trade responses to harmonized crop yield shocks from climate change are similar. However, the magnitudes differ significantly. The differences depend on model structure, in particular the specification of endogenous yield effects, land use change, and propensity to trade. These results highlight where future research on modeling climate change impacts on agriculture should focus.