Climate change and agriculture: modelling the impact of carbon dioxide emission on cereal yield in Ghana

The objective of the paper is to contribute to the body of knowledge in the area of climate change and agriculture by examining the effect of carbon dioxide concentration (CO2) on cereal yield using autoregressive distributed lag models (ARDL). The research is based on quantitative, descriptive and cross-sectional research using secondary data obtained from World Bank data base for the period of 1961-2010. The co-integration test indicates the series are co-integrated. The results on the long run and shorts run elastically co-efficient indicate that there is significant negative link between CO2 and cereal yield. There significant positive long run and short run link between cereal yield and income (proxied by real gross domestic product). Policy makers and agriculture scientists and environmental scientists should put in place policies to reduce atmospheric temperature increase and pollution to benefit from CO2 fertilization in order to ensure food security. The findings indicate that income (proxied by real gross domestic product) positively affect cereal yield. The link between CO2 and cereal production should be examine in future studies current study considered cereal yield.