Promoting sustainable agrifood production under climate change: Adaptation, returns, and food security implications

Abstract

Climate change is challenging sustainable agrifood production and food security, and encouraging farmers’ climate change adaptation can help promote sustainable agrifood production and ensure food security. This study investigates farmers’ climate change adaptation and its impact on agrifood production. We employ the propensity score matching (PSM) model to address the selection bias issue of climate change adaptation and estimate the survey data collected from 415 rice-producing households in rural China. We also estimate the inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) model for robustness check. The empirical results show that farmers’ decisions on climate change adaptation are influenced by household heads’ age, education level, life satisfaction, temperature perception, and transportation conditions. The treatment effect estimations of the PSM model reveal that climate change adaptation significantly increases land productivity by 41.24–44.29% and labor productivity by 55.06–63.72% in rice production. The IPWRA model estimation largely confirms the robustness of the PSM model estimation. We also find that climate change adaptation significantly increases the net returns of rice production. These findings have significant global implications. By understanding the factors influencing farmers’ decisions to adapt to climate change, policymakers worldwide can design targeted interventions to encourage similar practices in other regions. Promoting farmers’ climate change adaptation to increase farm productivity is crucial for ensuring global food security in the face of ongoing climate challenges.