Abstract
Given the increasing threat of climate change to agriculture, determining how to achieve farm sustainability is important for researchers and policy makers. Among others, protected cultivation has been proposed as a possible adaptive solution at the farm level. This study contributes to this research topic by quantifying the effects of the use of protected cultivation facilities on farm sustainability. In contrast to previous studies that relied on small-scale random surveys, a population-based sample of fruit, flower and vegetable farms was drawn from the Agricultural Census Survey in Taiwan. Propensity score matching, inverse probability weighting and inverse probability weighting regression adjustment methods were applied. Empirical results show that the use of protected cultivation facilities increases farm profit by 68–73%, other things being equal. This finding is persistent when farms suffer from disaster shocks. Moreover, the changes in farm labor use can be seen as a mechanism behind the positive effect of the protected cultivation facility use on farm profit. Our findings suggest that agricultural authority can consider subsidizing farms to increase the adoption of protected cultivation facilities to mitigate the risks resulting from natural disaster shocks.
Highlights
“Sustainable agriculture” is a multi-dimensional concept, which can be considered and measured on various aspects of sustainability
We compare farm revenue, farm productivity and farm profit among farm households who have, and have not, adopted protected cultivation facilities when agricultural disasters occur. This part of the analysis can bring deeper policy insights regarding the effectiveness of adopting protected cultivation practices on the mitigation of natural disaster shocks and achieving sustainable agriculture
Each farm in the survey was asked the following questions: (a) whether or not you adopted protected cultivation for farm production in 2015, and if yes, which type of protected cultivation facility you used; (b) the annual farm revenue and total production costs incurred in 2015; (c) size of cultivated area; (d) the total number of hired workers in 2015; (e) the number of days the farm operator worked on the farm in 2015, (f) whether or not the farm operator participated in off-farm employment in 2015; (g) if the farm household was exposed to any natural disaster in 2015
Summary
“Sustainable agriculture” is a multi-dimensional concept, which can be considered and measured on various aspects of sustainability. To cope with changes in climate and extreme weather, the Taiwanese government has promoted protected cultivation as one of the adaptation strategies for agriculture, which makes Taiwan an ideal case study to understand which factors are associated with farmers’ adoption on protected cultivation facilities, and how the adoption decision affects the economic aspects of sustainable agriculture, when farmers experience a bad season due to a natural disaster. We compare farm revenue, farm productivity and farm profit among farm households who have, and have not, adopted protected cultivation facilities when agricultural disasters occur This part of the analysis can bring deeper policy insights regarding the effectiveness of adopting protected cultivation practices on the mitigation of natural disaster shocks and achieving sustainable agriculture. We hypothesized and empirically tested whether the changes in labor use on farm production can be seen as the mechanism behind the evident effect of protected cultivation adoption on the economic profitability of farm households
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