AgDaily
Agricultural producers deal firsthand with changing weather conditions, and extreme events such as drought or flooding can impact their productivity and profit. Climate change models project such events will occur more often in the future. But studies of the economic consequences of weather and climate on agriculture typically focus on local impacts only.
A new study from the University of Illinois looks at how changes in weather — including extreme events — may decrease crop profit in one state while increasing profits in other states. The secret ingredient: U.S. interstate trade. It is expected to mitigate the economic impact of climate change by up to $14.5 billion by the middle of the century.
“Our motivation for the study is twofold: Climate change brings about more frequent and intense extreme weather events, which impact agricultural production. At the same time, U.S. and global populations are growing. We need to plan for an additional 64 million people in the U.S. and 1.9 billion people worldwide by 2050, which raises concerns for future food security,” says Sandy Dall’Erba, professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics (ACE) and director of the Regional Economics Applications Laboratory (REAL) at U of I. Dall’Erba is lead author on the study, published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.