Spatial analysis of farming viability and its contributing factors in California

Abstract

California is the leading agricultural state in the United States. Agricultural production is being threatened by many factors: loss of agricultural land, water shortage, among others. In this paper, we employed an ordinary least square regression (OLS) model and a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model to examine the relationship between farming viability in California and three contributing factors: energy intensification, product diversity, and government support by county. The OLS model revealed that energy intensification and product diversity were significantly related overall to farming viability. Locally, the GWR model demonstrated the significant spatial variation in the relationship between farming viability, product diversity and government support across counties. By taking into account the spatial variation, the GWR model presented a higher explanatory power than the OLS Model. These findings will provide farmers and policy makers a better understanding of the influence of local factors and the variation across space.