Does adaptation to climate change provide food security? A micro-perspective from Ethiopia

Salvatore Di Falco, Marcella Veronesi and Mahmud Yesuf

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We examine the driving forces behind farmers’ decisions to adapt to climate change, and the impact of adaptation on farmers’ food production. We investigate whether there are differences in the food production functions of farm households that adapted and those that did not adapt. We estimate a simultaneous equations model with endogenous switching to account for the heterogeneity in the decision to adapt or not, and for unobservable characteristics of farmers and their farm. We compare the expected food production under the actual and counterfactual cases that the farm household adapted or not to climate change. We find that the group of farm households that adapted has systematically different characteristics than the group of farm households that did not adapt. The relationship between production and average temperature is inverted U-shaped for farm households that adapted, while it is U-shaped for farm households that did not adapt, and vice versa in the case of precipitation. We find that adaptation increases food production, however, the impact of adaptation on food production is smaller for the farm households that actually did adapt than for the farm households that did not adapt in the counterfactual case that they adapted.

Keywords: adaptation; climate change; endogenous switching; Ethiopia; food security; production; spatial data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q18 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2010-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Does Adaptation to Climate Change Provide Food Security? A Micro-Perspective from Ethiopia (2011)
Working Paper: Does adaptation to climate change provide food security? A micro-perspective from Ethiopia (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:37592

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