In the Presence of Climate Change, the Use of Fertilizers and the Effect of Income on Agricultural Emissions

Ebru Guven Solakoglu,Bahar Celikkol Erbas

doi:10.3390/su9111989

Ebru Guven Solakoglu, Bahar Celikkol Erbas

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su9111989

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Abstract

This study looks into the factual link between nitrogen fertilizer use and the land annual mean temperature anomalies arising from climate change, incorporating the effect of income and agriculture share to understand better their impact on emissions from agricultural activities along climate indicators. The study unearths causalities associated with this link by employing the Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) with back-dated actual panel data specifically constructed for this study by combining four datasets from 2002 to 2010. In the long-run, the causality is significant and unidirectional, indicating that income, agriculture share, and land temperature anomalies cause agricultural emissions, and that disequilibrium from such emissions is not eliminated within a year. In the short-run, the effective use of nitrogen fertilizers and other associated agricultural practices can be achieved as countries approach per capita income of 7000 USD. Changes in the structure of economies have an expected effect on agricultural emissions. Temperature anomalies increase agricultural emissions from nitrogen fertilizers, possibly due to the fact that the potential negative impacts of these anomalies are mitigated by farmers through changes in crop production inputs. Therefore, as part of adoption strategies, to avoid the excessive and inefficient use of nitrogen fertilizers by farmers, economic incentives should be aligned with the national and global incentives of sustainability.

Highlights

In the face of global warming, agricultural production systems must become more resilient to long-term changes in temperature and precipitation, as well as to disruptive events
According to the unit root test results, for both the individual effect alone and the individual effect coupled with the linear trend, the null hypothesis of having unit root is not rejected neither by the IPS level analysis nor by the augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) tests
We reject the null hypothesis of unit root, suggesting both GDP per capita and agricultural share in GDP are integrated by order one, I(1)

Summary

Introduction

In the face of global warming, agricultural production systems must become more resilient to long-term changes in temperature and precipitation, as well as to disruptive events. Agriculture, as a climate sensitive sector, plays an important role in the economies of poor countries, where the impact is larger and the relationship between crop responses and temperature follows an inverted U-shape relationship [1]. The resilience of agricultural production systems to climate change requires higher efficiency in the use of natural resources and inputs of agricultural production [2]. In order to employ agricultural inputs more efficiently in the production process and adopt less emission intensive technologies, the effects of climate change on the use of these inputs need to be understood better

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Results