Effect of climate change induced agricultural risk on land use in Chinese small farms: Implications for adaptation strategy

This paper estimates the climate change induced risk for 14 crops measured by the yield deviation using the panel data from seven counties in Jiangsu province in China from 1998 to 2017, and then investigates the risk effect on cropland use in a representative farm using the survey data and the MOTAD model. The results show that the crop yield deviation are more susceptible to change in temperature than that in sunlight and precipitation. The crop-specific risk level amounts to 1.3-5.3% of the average yields. The risk leads to reducing the cultivated areas by 6% and also causes a significant change in cropland use. As an effective adaptation strategy of mitigating the climate change induced risk, the farms should reduce the total cultivated area by about 15% in comparison with the observed situation while the cropland use structure should be adjusted accordingly. More cropland should be allocated to wheat, peanut and cotton but the other crop areas should be reduced or maintained.