Giornate di Studio sulla Popolazione (Popdays), Giornate di Studio sulla Popolazione 2019

Font Size: 
Crop diversity as a strategy for adaptation to climate change: insights from Uganda panel data.
Chiara Antonelli, Manuela Coromaldi, Giacomo Pallante

##manager.scheduler.building##: Velodromo - Bocconi University
##manager.scheduler.room##: N05
Date: 2019-01-25 02:00 PM – 03:30 PM
Last modified: 2018-12-26

Abstract


The Ugandan territory is severely affected by climate-related events which endanger agriculture production and food security. The aim of this study is to explore to what extent farmers use crop diversity as a self-protection measure against climatic shocks in a context of heterogeneous, time-varying response. A panel multinomial endogenous switching regression model is adopted. In a first step a multinomial logit model is estimated on a categorical selection equation representing all the combinations of different levels of crop and income diversification. Then, separated OLS for each group of diversification strategies are estimated in the welfare outcome equation including the Inverse Mills Ratio from the first step as additional regressor that capture selection bias. The strategy is based on longitudinal data of Ugandan rural households combined with high-resolution climate data, which include daily maximum, minimum and mean temperature. Preliminary findings suggest that when farmers experience severe environmental conditions, they increase the number of crop species to reduce crop loss and maintain the livelihoods of farming families.


Keywords


Climate change, agriculture, adaptation, crop diversity, food security