Abstract
Crop switching has been examined in the literature addressing the production effects of irrigation or as viable strategy in the adaptation to climate change, which is closely related to agricultural resilience. Attention to the identification of the direct linkage between crop switching and farm profitability, and, thus, farm sustainability, however, has been quite limited. This study attempts to provide a significant complement to the extant research by identifying the treatment effect of crop switching on the net returns of crop growers in Taiwan. A multinomial endogenous treatment effects model with the latent-factor structure is used to take self-selection into account. The result suggests that farm households’ economic resilience is closely related to their choice of crops, which constitute the major source of farm income. Specifically, among the six cash crop categories, fruit crops and other crops are found to be most remunerating and, thus, suggests possible improvements in farm households’ economic resilience through crop switching. A further analysis of the distributional implications of crop switching through quantile regression confirms the persistent and stronger effects of crop choice on net returns when moving from the bottom to the top quartiles along the net-return distribution. This result suggests a close association of crop choices with farm income inequality among the crop farm households in Taiwan, which in turn implies possible distributional effects of crop switching.
Highlights
Academic Editor: Antonio BoggiaMost of the research on the sustainability of agriculture focused their attention on mitigating the environmental impacts of agricultural production
We report the estimates of the multinomial treatment-effects model with the fruit households as the reference group while controlling for the farm/household as well as the major operator’s characteristics in Tables 3 and 4
This study proposes the use of a multinomial treatment model to examine the contribution of crop choice to economic resilience
Summary
Most of the research on the sustainability of agriculture focused their attention on mitigating the environmental impacts of agricultural production. Strategies to building and/or strengthening agricultural resilience have been viewed as crucial in the process of adaptation to climate change. The Australian Drought Resilience Funding Plan identifies three strategic priorities, including (1) economic resilience (i.e., an innovative and profitable agricultural sector); (2) environmental resilience (i.e., sustainable farming landscapes); and (3) social resilience (resourceful and adaptable rural communities) [1]. The present study attempts to provide a significant complement to the extant research on agricultural resilience by applying the multinomial treatment-effects-modelling approach to the identification of the causal effect of one of the climate change adaptation strategies—crop switching—on farm households’ economic resilience, and possible distributional implications
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
