| This study evaluates the potential implications that three scenarios of climate change may have on the ability of the world's agricultural systems to adapt to the new environment. The study tests two hypotheses: that in a global system of trade, the re-allocation of agricultural production responsive to climate change will allow trade adaptations to function in a way that meeting global agricultural demand will not be jeopardized, and second, factor use, factor prices, and agricultural commodity prices will not increase.;It is not clear that models used to evaluate trade as a form of adaptation in previous studies reflect changes based on the leading basis of the theory: the principle of comparative advantage. This work presents empirical results consistent with endogenous responses to climate change modeled in a world economic framework based on the determinants of the principle: a world of cost minimization and factor constraints. The modeling approach represents a comprehensive integration of a global system of trade with climatically defined land resources; the approach made possible to translate changes in land productivity and land-type endowments associated with climate conditions into changes in regional comparative advantage, and trace the likely impacts that those may generate in the patterns of regional specialization of production and trade.;The study fails to reject the first hypothesis—the impacts of all three climate change scenarios did not jeopardize the world's capacity to sustain the same level of consumption as in the reference scenario. However, the study rejects the other hypotheses: the use of croplands needed to maintain the level of production and consumption increased, factor prices of cropland, pastureland, capital and labor increased, and world prices of the agricultural commodities became greater, too. |
