Open Research Newcastle
Browse

The impacts of climate change and smallholder farmers’ adaptive capacities on rice production in Chengdu, China: macro-micro analysis

Download (790.54 kB)
journal contribution
posted on 2025-05-09, 20:21 authored by Robert Becker Pickson, Ge He, Elliot Boateng
Among other cultivated crops, rice is the most sensitive to climate variability over its growing season. As such, over-reliance on climate conditions for rice farming calls for a wide range of strategies critical to curtailing the adverse impact of climate change on rice production. Notwithstanding, there remain considerable gaps in our knowledge of adaptive capacities among China’s small-scale farmers who depend on climate conditions for farming. This study is broadly divided into two parts that are distinct but connected. First, we assess the effects of climate change on rice production in Chengdu (China), covering the period 2000Q1-2016Q4. We show that mean rainfall and temperature induce rice production positively in the long and short run. While temperature variability insignificantly impacts rice production in the long run, it plays a substantial role in the short run. Rainfall variability and the interaction term between temperature and precipitation are unfavourable to rice production in the long and short run. The results reveal that energy usage and fertilizer application support rice production, although the impact of energy consumption is significant in the short run. Second, we used a survey of 383 smallholder rice growers in Chengdu to examine farmers’ adaptive capacities to climate change in rice production. The results show that farmers’ adaptive capabilities significantly affect rice production. We argue that the centrepiece of improving rice production under continuous climate change is for farmers to develop a high adaptive capacity to the changing climatic conditions. This is achieved through intensive education on available adaptation strategies and their long-term implications.

History

Journal title

Environmental Research Communications

Volume

4

Issue

7

Article number

75011

Publisher

IOP Publishing

Place published

London

Language

  • en, English

College/Research Centre

College of Human and Social Futures

School

Newcastle Business School

Rights statement

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

Usage metrics

    Publications

    Licence

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC