Smallholder Agriculture and Climate Change

The impact of climate change on smallholder and subsistence agriculture.

Some of the most important impacts of global climate change will be felt among the populations, predominantly in developing countries, referred to as "subsistence" or "smallholder" farmers. Their vulnerability to climate change comes both from being predominantly located in the tropics, and from various socioeconomic, demographic, and policy trends limiting their capacity to adapt to change. Ho...

Climate Change and Agriculture

concentration of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) by some 30 percent since the industrial revolution, and that rise continues at a rate of approximately 0.4 percent per year. Despite its seemingly minute concentration (only 0.035 percent), CO 2 inhibits the escape of longwave (thermal) radiation emitted by the earth throughout the entire atmosphere, a process known as the “greenhouse effect.” The presenc...

Climate change and smallholder farmers in Malawi

Agriculture on the Brink: Climate Change, Labor and Smallholder Farming in Botswana

Botswana is a semi-arid, middle-income African country that imports 90 percent of its food. Despite its relative prosperity, Botswana also suffers from one of the highest measures of income inequality in the world, persistent poverty, and relatively high levels of food insecurity. The objective of this paper is to explore how political economy, climate change and livelihood dynamics are synergi...

Climate Change and Agriculture Reconsidered

Despite the existence of a large and growing literature on the potential impact of climate change on agriculture, there still exists some disagreement about the magnitude and even the sign. Our own research suggests that the impact on U.S. agriculture is likely to be strongly negative, based on a series of studies in which we link farmland values to climate variables, and crop yields to both cl...