Tackling climate change: Agroforestry adoption in the face of regional weather extremes

Christian Stetter and Johannes Sauer

Ecological Economics, 2024, vol. 224, issue C

Abstract: The cultivation of agroforestry systems is regarded as an effective strategy that can help synergistically mitigate and adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change and regional extreme weather events. This study addresses the question of whether, and under what conditions, farmers are likely to adopt agroforestry systems in response to regional weather extremes and presents a novel research approach to tackle this question. A discrete choice experiment was conducted to elicit farmers’ preferences for agroforestry and wood-based land use systems. The results were combined with geospatial weather information. Assuming adaptive weather expectations, land users’ dynamic responses to extreme weather were simulated in terms of adoption probabilities. Farmers in the case study region in southeastern Germany were found to have a negative preference for alley cropping systems (i.e. agroforestry) and short rotation coppice, compared to an exclusively crop-based land use system. However, the results from the simulation of a 2018-like extreme weather event showed that alley cropping has a high probability of being adopted in the long-term. This study provides novel insights into the adaptive uptake of climate-resilient agroforestry systems. This information can be used to develop more effective policies and programs to promote agroforestry as a climate-resilient land-use strategy.

Keywords: Climate change; Extreme weather; Land use; Agroforestry; Discrete choice experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800924001630
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:224:y:2024:i:c:s0921800924001630

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2024.108266

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().