Adaptation strategies and land productivity of banana farmers under climate change in China

Abstract

Climate change has become a critical challenge to land productivity in developing countries. Adaptation strategies can increase farmers’ resilience to climate change in agricultural production. Many studies have explored how farmers adapted to climate change on the underlying premise that they homogeneously have a complete knowledge about climate change adaptation strategies. However, the knowledge of smallholder farmers can be incomplete and heterogeneous particularly under climatic shocks. And the role of social network in farmers’ adaptation decisions cannot be neglected. We specify social network into formal social tie (cooperative membership), and informal social tie (to local farmers and agricultural input retailers). This paper is the first attempt to examine the heterogeneous impact of social ties on farmers’ adaptation decisions, and further assess the effect of adaptation strategies on land productivity under climate change using Augmented Inverse Probability Weights (AIPW) estimator, based on the primary data collected from banana farmers in China. The results show that 55 percent of banana farmers adopted adaptation strategies to mitigate the impact of climate change in farming practices. Out of eight coping strategies, diversifying crops, increasing chemical use, increasing irrigation and planting trees were prioritized measures used by banana farmers. Both formal and informal social ties of farmers exerted a significant impact on farmers’ adaptation decisions. Participation in agricultural cooperatives and tie to agricultural input retailers increased farmers’ uptake rate of adaptation strategies. In contrast, tie to local farmers hindered farmers from taking active actions to combat climate change. We also found that the adaptation strategies significantly increased the land productivity of banana farmers. Interestingly, the land productivity of adopters was more influenced by the formal social tie (cooperative membership); while the informal social tie (to agricultural input retailers) affected that of non-adopters. These findings highlight the importance of different social ties of smallholder farmers in designing policy package to increase their responses to climate change and improve land productivity in developing regions.