Three Essays on Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture

Abstract

In the first chapter, we evaluate the effects of climate change on Vietnam’s rice market. Results suggest that under a low-emission scenario and without interventions, rice production would drop by as much as 18% by 2030 relative to the 1980–1999 average. Farm and wholesale prices would increase by 1.86%, causing domestic demand to fall by 0.38%. The export sector would experience a rise of 6.94% in export free-on-board prices and a drop of 55.36% in export quantities. Farmers would experience a sales loss of 16.02%, whereas wholesalers would see a sales gain of 1.48%. For exporters, their sales loss would amount to 48.42%. The second chapter examined the impact of changing climate on profit efficiency of rice farming in Ben Tre province, Vietnam. Using the stochastic profit frontier function, the study found that the profit efficiency score of rice farmers is as low as 59% on average. This implies that farmers could improve their profit by about 40%. Rice farmers in the area with rainfall anomaly of +185mm are found to have profit efficiency as low as 37.1%. On average, their profit efficiency scores are lower than those of rice farmers in the same district by 22 percentage points. Rice farmers would suffer worse loss of profit from increasing abnormal rainfall trigged by changing climate. The third chapter evaluated impact of climate change on peanut and peanut butter market. The results suggested that an increase of 1% in average maximum temperature may raise peanut price and peanut butter price by 4.88% and 0.72% respectively, resulting in a fall of 0.14% in demand for peanut butter. Rainfall during the harvesting period has a modest effect on peanut and peanut butter market. Peanut price and peanut butter price may increase by 0.16% and 0.02% respectively in response to 1% increase in rainfall during the harvesting period. On the other hand, average maximum temperature during the harvesting period has a positive effect on peanut supply. This effect brings a fall in peanut price and peanut butter price. 1% increase in average maximum temperature during the harvesting period may reduce peanut price and peanut butter price by 2.46% and 0.36% respectively, causing demand for peanut butter to increase 0.07%.