Conservation Agriculture and Climate Resilience

Jeffrey Michler, K. Baylis, Mary Arends-Kuenning and K. Mazvimavi

No 277458, 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: Climate change is predicted to increase the number and severity of extreme rainfall events, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. In response, development agencies are encouraging the adoption of `climate-smart' agricultural techniques, such as conservation agriculture (CA). However, little rigorous evidence exists to demonstrates the effect of CA on production or climate resilience, and what evidence there is, is hampered by selection bias. Using panel data from Zimbabwe, we test how CA performs during extreme rainfall events - both shortfalls and surpluses. We control for the endogenous adoption decision and find that while CA has little, or if anything, a negative effect on yields during periods of average rainfall, it is effective in mitigating the negative impacts of rainfall shocks. Households that practice CA tend to receive higher yields compared to households using conventional methods in years of both low and high rainfall. We conclude that the lower yields during normal rainfall seasons may be a proximate factor in low uptake of CA. Policy should focus promotion of CA on these climate resiliency benefits. Acknowledgement :

Keywords: Environmental; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/277458/files/723.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Conservation agriculture and climate resilience (2019)
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:ags:iaae18:277458

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.277458

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia from International Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().