IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/climat/v159y2020i3d10.1007_s10584-019-02622-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Long-run trend in agricultural yield and climatic factors in Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Paolo Agnolucci

    (University College London)

  • Vincenzo De Lipsis

    (University College London)

Abstract

Reliable projections of crop production are an essential tool for the design of feasible policy plans to tackle food security and land allocation, and an accurate characterization of the long-run trend in crop yield is the key ingredient in such projections. We provide several contributions adding to our current understanding of the impact of climatic factors on crop yield. First of all, reflecting the complexity of agricultural systems and the time required for any change to diffuse, we show that crop yield in Europe has historically been characterized by a stochastic trend rather than the deterministic specifications normally used in the literature. Secondly, we found that, contrary to previous studies, the trend in crop yield has slowly changed across time rather than being affected by a single abrupt permanent change. Thirdly, we provide strong evidence that climatic factors have played a major role in shaping the long-run trajectory of crop yield over the decades, by influencing both the size and the statistical nature of the trend. In other words, climatic factors are important not only for the year-to-year fluctuations in crop yield but also for its path in the long-run. Finally, we find that, for most countries in this study, the trend in temperature is responsible for a reduction in the long-run growth rate of yield in wheat, whereas a small gain is produced in maize, except for Southern European countries.

Suggested Citation

  • Paolo Agnolucci & Vincenzo De Lipsis, 2020. "Long-run trend in agricultural yield and climatic factors in Europe," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 159(3), pages 385-405, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:159:y:2020:i:3:d:10.1007_s10584-019-02622-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s10584-019-02622-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10584-019-02622-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10584-019-02622-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Frances C. Moore & David B. Lobell, 2014. "Adaptation potential of European agriculture in response to climate change," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 4(7), pages 610-614, July.
    2. Jushan Bai, 1994. "Least Squares Estimation Of A Shift In Linear Processes," Journal of Time Series Analysis, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(5), pages 453-472, September.
    3. Commandeur, Jacques J.F. & Koopman, Siem Jan, 2007. "An Introduction to State Space Time Series Analysis," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199228874.
    4. Deepak K. Ray & Navin Ramankutty & Nathaniel D. Mueller & Paul C. West & Jonathan A. Foley, 2012. "Recent patterns of crop yield growth and stagnation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 3(1), pages 1-7, January.
    5. Patricio Grassini & Kent M. Eskridge & Kenneth G. Cassman, 2013. "Distinguishing between yield advances and yield plateaus in historical crop production trends," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 4(1), pages 1-11, December.
    6. Jushan Bai, 1997. "Estimation Of A Change Point In Multiple Regression Models," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 79(4), pages 551-563, November.
    7. Jushan Bai & Pierre Perron, 1998. "Estimating and Testing Linear Models with Multiple Structural Changes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 66(1), pages 47-78, January.
    8. Michael S. Kaylen & Suffyanu S. Koroma, 1991. "Trend, Weather Variables, and the Distribution of U.S. Corn Yields," Review of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 13(2), pages 249-258.
    9. Matthijs Tollenaar & Jon Fridgen & Priyanka Tyagi & Paul W. Stackhouse Jr & Saratha Kumudini, 2017. "The contribution of solar brightening to the US maize yield trend," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 7(4), pages 275-278, April.
    10. Deepak K. Ray & James S. Gerber & Graham K. MacDonald & Paul C. West, 2015. "Climate variation explains a third of global crop yield variability," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 6(1), pages 1-9, May.
    11. Charles B. Moss & J. S. Shonkwiler, 1993. "Estimating Yield Distributions with a Stochastic Trend and Nonnormal Errors," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 75(4), pages 1056-1062.
    12. Tor N. Tolhurst & Alan P. Ker, 2015. "On Technological Change in Crop Yields," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 97(1), pages 137-158.
    13. Durbin, James & Koopman, Siem Jan, 2012. "Time Series Analysis by State Space Methods," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, edition 2, number 9780199641178.
    14. Lucie Michel & David Makowski, 2013. "Comparison of Statistical Models for Analyzing Wheat Yield Time Series," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(10), pages 1-11, October.
    15. Ortiz-Bobea, Ariel & Tack, Jesse B., 2018. "Another genetic yield revolution is needed to offset climate change effects on U.S. maize," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274380, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    16. Hans Visser & Arthur Petersen & Willem Ligtvoet, 2014. "On the relation between weather-related disaster impacts, vulnerability and climate change," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 125(3), pages 461-477, August.
    17. Mario Cunha & Christian Richter, 2016. "The impact of climate change on the winegrape vineyards of the Portuguese Douro region," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 138(1), pages 239-251, September.
    18. Myers, Robert J. & Jayne, Thomas S., 1997. "Regime shifts and technology diffusion in crop yield growth paths with an application to maize yields in Zimbabwe," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 41(3), pages 1-19.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zhilu Sun & Teng Fu, 2022. "The Evolutionary Trends and Convergence of Cereal Yield in Europe and Central Asia," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-18, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Boldea, Otilia & Hall, Alastair R., 2013. "Estimation and inference in unstable nonlinear least squares models," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 172(1), pages 158-167.
    2. Mohitosh Kejriwal & Claude Lopez, 2013. "Unit Roots, Level Shifts, and Trend Breaks in Per Capita Output: A Robust Evaluation," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(8), pages 892-927, November.
    3. Perron, Pierre & Zhu, Xiaokang, 2005. "Structural breaks with deterministic and stochastic trends," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 129(1-2), pages 65-119.
    4. Yaein Baek, 2018. "Estimation of a Structural Break Point in Linear Regression Models," Papers 1811.03720, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2020.
    5. Gallegati, Marco & Ramsey, James B., 2013. "Structural change and phase variation: A re-examination of the q-model using wavelet exploratory analysis," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 60-73.
    6. Venkata Jandhyala & Stergios Fotopoulos & Ian MacNeill & Pengyu Liu, 2013. "Inference for single and multiple change-points in time series," Journal of Time Series Analysis, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(4), pages 423-446, July.
    7. Ketenci, Natalya, 2015. "Capital mobility in Russia," Russian Journal of Economics, Elsevier, vol. 1(4), pages 386-403.
    8. Seong Yeon Chang & Pierre Perron, 2018. "A comparison of alternative methods to construct confidence intervals for the estimate of a break date in linear regression models," Econometric Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(6), pages 577-601, July.
    9. Eiji Kurozumi & Yohei Yamamoto, 2015. "Confidence sets for the break date based on optimal tests," Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 18(3), pages 412-435, October.
    10. Eiji Kurozumi, 2018. "Confidence Sets for the Date of a Structural Change at the End of a Sample," Journal of Time Series Analysis, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(6), pages 850-862, November.
    11. Zongwu Cai & Seong Yeon Chang, 2018. "A New Test In A Predictive Regression with Structural Breaks," WORKING PAPERS SERIES IN THEORETICAL AND APPLIED ECONOMICS 201811, University of Kansas, Department of Economics, revised Dec 2018.
    12. Jiang, Liang & Wang, Xiaohu & Yu, Jun, 2018. "New distribution theory for the estimation of structural break point in mean," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 205(1), pages 156-176.
    13. Laurent Callot & Johannes Tang Kristensen, 2014. "Vector Autoregressions with Parsimoniously Time Varying Parameters and an Application to Monetary Policy," CREATES Research Papers 2014-41, Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University.
    14. Nazif Çatık, Abdurrahman & Huyugüzel Kışla, Gül & Akdeni̇z, Coşkun, 2020. "Time-varying impact of oil prices on sectoral stock returns: Evidence from Turkey," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    15. Vujić, Sunčica & Commandeur, Jacques J.F. & Koopman, Siem Jan, 2016. "Intervention time series analysis of crime rates: The case of sentence reform in Virginia," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 311-323.
    16. Ortiz-Bobea, Ariel & Tack, Jesse B., 2018. "Another genetic yield revolution is needed to offset climate change effects on U.S. maize," 2018 Annual Meeting, August 5-7, Washington, D.C. 274380, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    17. Rituparna Kar & Nityananda Sarkar, 2006. "Mean and volatility dynamics of Indian rupee/US dollar exchange rate series: an empirical investigation," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 13(1), pages 41-69, March.
    18. Oka, Tatsushi & Perron, Pierre, 2018. "Testing for common breaks in a multiple equations system," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 204(1), pages 66-85.
    19. Jouini, Jamel & Boutahar, Mohamed, 2005. "Evidence on structural changes in U.S. time series," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 391-422, May.
    20. De Wachter, Stefan & Tzavalis, Elias, 2012. "Detection of structural breaks in linear dynamic panel data models," Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 56(11), pages 3020-3034.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:climat:v:159:y:2020:i:3:d:10.1007_s10584-019-02622-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.