Impact of Climate Change on Food Crop Production in Congo Brazzaville

Edwige Kamitewoko

doi:10.4236/me.2021.1211085

Abstract

Agriculture is a key for economic transformation, food security, and nutrition. It generates foreign currency through the export process of agricultural products. It creates a source of employment to the population through farming, business and research activities therefore raising the standard of living of individuals. Agriculture, especially food crop production has always been at the mercy of unpredictable weather, but a rapidly changing climate is making agriculture an even more vulnerable enterprise. Food crop production depends on a set of factors which contribute to the increase or decrease of its volume. These factors are essential to guarantee quality production, while others are complementary and serve to improve yields in terms of quality and quantity. However, among these factors, others are difficult to control such as climatic hazards. This study analyzes the impact of climate change on Congo agriculture using data from FAO STAT. Applying Autoregressive-Distributed Lag Regression or ARDL bounds testing approach for analysis of co-integration between the variables, the results reveal that, rainfall depreciates the production of food crops in the long run and has a negative effect on production in the short run; the cultivated area impacts positively food crop production in the long run, but has no effect in the short run. A better understanding of farmers’ perceptions of/and responses to climate change is important for decision-makers to design more effective adaptation policies. In order to lowering the drastic impacts of climate change on crop productivity, the study recommends a development of advanced irrigation system, farmers’ access to meteorological information and an increase in area under cultivation.

Highlights

In many developing regions, agriculture is of major importance for national economic performance, for example, as expressed by its share in gross domestic product (GDP), it employs a large proportion of the labour force, represents a major source of foreign exchange, supplies the bulk of basic food and provides subsistence and other income to more than half of the developing countries population (World Development Report, 2008)
Applying Autoregressive-Distributed Lag Regression or autoregressive models (ARDL) bounds testing approach for analysis of co-integration between the variables, the results reveal that, rainfall depreciates the production of food crops in the long run and has a negative effect on production in the short run; the cultivated area impacts positively food crop production in the long run, but has no effect in the short run
The results of the Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF), Phillips-Perron (PP) and Kwiatkwoski, Phillips, Smidt and Shin (KPSS) unit root tests show that the endogenous variable and the exogenous variables are stationary in first difference at 5% threshold

Summary

Introduction

Agriculture is of major importance for national economic performance, for example, as expressed by its share in gross domestic product (GDP) (ranging from 30 to 60 percent in about two thirds of them), it employs a large proportion of the labour force (from 40 percent to as much as 90 percent in most cases), represents a major source of foreign exchange (from 25 percent to as much as 95 percent in three quarters of the countries), supplies the bulk of basic food and provides subsistence and other income to more than half of the developing countries population (World Development Report, 2008). Agriculture is and will continue to be the main livelihood for millions of smallholder farmers in Africa and other developing countries across the world. This sector is often deemed a “national security” priority by countries as those products are necessary for existing. Climate change is one of the biggest challenges to the world in present times It influences all regions of the world, which causes significant perturbations that can be expected to be natural systems that have inevitable impacts on the economic policies of highland areas (Kohler and Maseli, 2012) through both direct and indirect means (Fahad and Jing, 2017)

Methods

Results

Conclusion