Agricultural Innovation and Adaptation to Climate Change: Insights from Genetically Engineered Maize

Seungki Lee, Yongjie Ji and GianCarlo Moschini

Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications from Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University

Abstract: Climate change is one of the major threats to the global food supply, and adaptation by technological progress is believed to be essential. What is the scope of the required innovation tasks? To address this question, we estimate the yield gain in US maize production due to a major novel technology: genetically engineered (GE) varieties. Next, the yield model is used to extrapolate future expected yields given climate change projections from twenty large-scale models and two warming scenarios. We find that climate change entails significant yield shortfalls. The scale of these yield gaps, by the end of the century, ranges from about 2.7 to 6.3 times the total yield gains from GE varieties. These results suggest that the scope of adaptation is challenging. Ambitious and targeted R&D efforts, and innovation breakthroughs, may be required to close the yield gaps likely to arise from climate change.

Date: 2021-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-env and nep-ino
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.card.iastate.edu/products/publications/pdf/21wp616.pdf Full Text (application/pdf)
https://www.card.iastate.edu/products/publications/synopsis/?p=1319 Online Synopsis (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:ias:cpaper:21-wp616

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) Publications from Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) at Iowa State University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().