Differentiated agricultural sensitivity and adaptability to rising temperatures across regions and sectors in China

Abstract

Prioritizing efforts that adapt agriculture to a warmer climate requires understanding how different regions and sectors of the agricultural system respond to warming. We assess the regional and sectoral responses in agriculture to rising temperatures using a rich and comprehensive panel of Chinese counties over more than two decades. We leverage temperature variations both from year to year and over multiple-year periods to separately identify short-run and intermediate-run responses. We find that temperature effects vary between northern and southern China, and between sectors (cropping, livestock, forestry, and fisheries). Warming's impacts are concentrated in the cooler northern region, where contemporaneous high temperatures depress both the cropping and livestock sectors but benefit the forestry sector. When intermediate-run adaptations are accounted for, the negative short-run impact of extreme temperatures on the cropping sector can be largely mitigated. But the mitigating effect is limited in the livestock sector. These findings inform the design and ranking of region and sector-specific policies and investments for agricultural adaptation to climate change.