Agricultural adaptation to climate change: the imperative, the reaction, and the policy challenges

Lunyu C. Zhao, Xinran R. Wang, Chengcheng J. Fei and Bruce A. McCarl

Chapter 8 in Handbook on Climate Change Impacts, Mitigation, and Adaptation in Agriculture, 2026, pp 136-167 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Climate change significantly affects global agriculture, requiring both ongoing and future adaptation. Adaptation actions involve private and public actions. Private parties, such as farmers, can adapt land use, livestock, and applied management, including adopting drought/heat resilient crop varieties, changing crop mixes, changing livestock species, and improving water management. On the public side, adaptation actions involve developing public good adaptations with strategies such as infrastructure investments, research on technological possibilities, improved management, education, and extension. Public parties can also undertake initiatives to relax private parties’ adaptation constraints, providing such things as funding, resources, information, and policy-based incentives. To date, adaptation efforts fall below needs, creating an adaptation deficit. This chapter reviews the adaptation issues largely from an agricultural perspective, covering effects, needs, potential actions, public and private involvement, observed actions, limiting factors, motivations for actions, funding possibilities, and adaptation action imperfections, with a set of possible research directions.

Keywords: Adaptation; Climate change; Agriculture; Private and public actions; Agricultural sector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035344963
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