Crop Management as an Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change in Early Modern Era: A Comparative Study of Eastern and Western Europe

Qing Pei, David D. Zhang, Harry F. Lee and Guodong Li
Additional contact information
Qing Pei: Department of Social Sciences, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
David D. Zhang: Department of Geography and International Centre for China Development Study, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Harry F. Lee: Department of Geography and International Centre for China Development Study, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Guodong Li: Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Agriculture, 2016, vol. 6, issue 3, 1-17

Abstract: Effective adaptation determines agricultural vulnerability to climate change, especially in the pre-industrial era. Crop management as an agricultural adaptation to climate change in recent human history, however, has rarely been systematically evaluated. Using Europe as our study area, we statistically compared yield ratio of wheat, rye, barley, and oats (an important performance indicator of an agrarian economy) between Eastern and Western Europe in AD 1500–1800. In particular, a statistical comparison was made of crop yield ratio in the two regions during the warm agricultural recovery period AD 1700–1800. The general trend of crop yield in Eastern and Western Europe basically followed the alternation of climatic epochs, in which the extreme cooling period in AD 1560–1660 drastically reduced the crop yield ratio. The yield ratio of rye in Eastern and Western Europe was very similar throughout the entire study period. However, the yield ratio of wheat, barley, and oats showed different patterns in the two regions and increased drastically in Western Europe in the warm agricultural recovery period, which might have contributed to rapid socio-economic development in Western Europe and eventually the East–West Divide in Europe in the following centuries.

Keywords: climate change; crop yield ratio; non-parametric analysis; Eastern and Western Europe; early modern era (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/6/3/29/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/6/3/29/ (text/html)

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:gam:jagris:v:6:y:2016:i:3:p:29-:d:73766

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().