Study On Chinese Rice Farmers' Adaptation Behaviors And Effectivenesses To Climate Extremes

Climate extremes,characterized by droughts and floods,have caused serious losses to grain production,especially for rice production.Especially under the current situation of three contradictions and three chanllenges intertwined together,that is,faced with the three contradictions of the decreasing arable land,deteriorating environment condition and increasing food demand,and the three chanllenges of the double bind of resource and environment,the double squeeze of cost and price and increasing extreme climates in China,it is critical to systematically discuss and analyze the impact of climate extremes on rice production,which is fundamental for decision makers to fully understand the anti-risk capability of food production and deal with the potential food gap and food crisis in time.However,most of current researches on climate change and rice yield,especially for the impact of climate extremes(such as droughts and floods)on rice yield,either only use single macro statistical data or use small sample size of micro survey data,and they can't combine the macro and micro data effectively,which is difficult or cannot fully reflect the specific characteristics of farmers' adaptation behaviors and their effectivenesses from the micro level.As the microeconomic entity of adapting to climate extrems,farmers' adaptation behaviors are the basis for improving their adaptive capabilities.So it is of great significance to systematically analyze farmers' adaptation behaviors to climate extremes.Therefore,this paper aims to systematically analyze the trend and characteristics of climate extrems and its corresponding impact on rice yield,as well as farmers' perceptions adaptation on climate extremes and the effectiveness of rice farmers' adaptation behaviors by comprehensively using the macro data of climate extrems and the micro panel data through a large-scale survey.By taking into account of the adoption of endogenity,this paper further estimates the impact of climate extremes on rice farmers' critical adaptation behaviors and their effectivenesses by ultilzing ATE model and endogeneous switching regression model.All of which can contribute to having a deep understanding of farmers'adaptation mechanism on climate extremes and have far-researching effects on the sustainable development of rice industry and even the national food security in China.In light of the above questions,this study aims to study rice farmers' adaptation behaviors to climate extremes and their effectivenesses from the micro perspective of rice farmers.Specifically,this study firstly defines the relevant concepts and reviews the important theoretical basis,as well as has a summary and comment on current researches on climate change and agricultural production in China both at home and abroad.Based on summing up and investigating the trends and characteristics of climate extremes disasters in China during the past two decades,this study then analyses the effect of climate extremes on rice yield by using the provincial panel data.Through which we can preliminarily conclude the basic fact that climate extremes have caused serious yield loss on rice production judging from the macro level.Next,by using large scale household survey data in four major rice producing provinces,this study empirically analyzes the barriers or obstacles that affecting rice farmers' adaptation behaviors to climate extremes as well as evaluates the effectivenesses of adaptation behaviors.Thus,three most common adaptation behaviors taken by rice farmers are identified at last,that is,increasing the input of chemical fertilizers and pesticides,selecting new varieties,and adopting conservation tillage.Therefore,the following three chapters focus on finding out the main factors that affecting rice farmers' the above three most common adaptation behaviors as well as quantifying their specific effectivenesses from the perspective of factor input,variety choice and technology adoption,respectively.Finally,from two aspects of both "adaptation capability" and "food security",some policy implications and suggestions are put forward to improve rice farmers' adaptation capabilities,promote the sustainable development of rice industry and guarantee food security in China.On the basis of the above analysis,the main conclusions are as follows:(1)No matter from perspective of the damage area,disaster-affectd area,droughts and floods,the overall trend of climate extreme disasters displays the trend of rising,and droughts and floods are the two most serious and harmful meteorological disasters to agricultural production in China.Besides,the impact of climate extreme vary across districts,and the results show that the severity of the impact of climate extremes disasters on four provinces is Hunan>Sichuan>Jiangsu>Zhejiang.(2)Rice farmers tend to choose adaptation behaviors that are characterized with easy to operate,low-cost and self-interested.The top three preferred adaptation behaviors are in turn "increasing the input of chemical fertilizers and pesticides","selecting stress tolerant variety","adopting conservation tillage",while for those adaptation behaviors that are difficult to operate,high-cost and altruistic,rice farmers are less likely to adopt.(3)Climate extremes have crowding-in effects on rice farmers' chemical fertilizers and pesticides use behavior.The results indicate that Climate extremes,characterized by droughts and floods,do induce rice farmers to increase chemical fertilizers and pesticides to copy with diseases and pests.Under ceteris paribus,rice farmers who perceived very obvious and obvious climate extremes increased by about 3.42 kg/mu and 1.20 kg/mu in the quantity of chemical fertilizers and pesticides use on average.Besides,rice farmers' risk attitudes,membership in any cooperatives and whether participant in fertilization training are major factors that affect rice farmers' chemical fertilizer and pesticides use behavior.(4)Stress tolerant variety choice,considered as one of the main adaptation measures,could help farmers reduce yield loss resulting from climate extremes and contribute to the increase in rice yield.By assuming Hicksian neutral technology and employ an IV regression to estimate the average treatment effect(ATE)on rice yield for adopting stress tolerant variety and find that rice farmers who adopted the stress tolerant variety on average increased rice yield by 15.5%in comparison to the non-adopters,confirming the hypothesis that the selection of stress tolerant variety could contribute to the increase in rice yield.(5)With the frequent occurrence of climate extremes,conservation tillage plays an important role in water saving and drought resistance,which can help increase rice yield.Empirical results find that compared with the counterfactual case of no-adoption,rice farmers who adopted the conservation tillage increased yield by 30.53 kg/mu(about 7%),In contrast,the farmers who did not adopt,would increase rice yield by 15 kg/mu(about 4%)if they adopted,much smaller than the adopters.These findings suggest adapting to droughts or floods through adopting conversation tillage does increase rice production and contribute to the reduction in rice yield loss.Based on the major findings and conclusions above,several policy implications and suggestions on how to improve rice farmers' climate extremes adaptation capabilities and promote the sustainable development of rice industry so as to guarantee food security are proposed:(1)Investing more on cultivating stress tolerant rice varieties,such as drought resistant,flood resistant and disease and pest resistant rice varieties and scaling up and promoting technical guidance on the cost-effective conservation tillage adoption.Meanwhile,various advanced agricultural techniques and farm management,such as crop cultivation,formula fertilization by soil testing,integrated control of diseases and pests should be taken comprehensively to give full play to the effectivenesses of adopting tolerant variety and conservation tillage.(2)Providing more public services on the suitable seeding-time and prediction and forecasting of agricultural meteorological disasters,such as spreading warning information during or after the disaster,assigning technical experts to field and enhancing field management guidance and so on,in order to improve the capacity of early warning of preventing disasters and reducing damages and improve rice farmers' adaptation capacity.(3)Strengthening the construction of water conservancy infrastructure and optimizing the allocation of water resources.The frequent occurrence of extreme climate events fully reflects the current serious issues of adequate irrigation and water infrastructure,which is characterized by weak foundation,low standard and overall tension in China.Therefore,comprehensive management mode should be strengthened to realize scientific management of water resources,such as water-saving,field irrigation,drainage technology,as well as achieving the matching use by combining every single technology according to local conditions,in order to promote the sustainable development of rice industry and ensure food security.