Agricultural and Forestry Land and Labor Use under Long-Term Climate Change in Chile

Abstract

The appropriate design of land-use and rural employment policies depends upon the anticipated performance of the farm sector in the context of expected climate changes, especially with respect to land allocations to potential activities. Concerns over the possible net benefits of land-use changes are particularly acute in lower- and middle-income countries, where agriculture tends to be important in employment, income generation and foreign-exchange earnings. This paper presents an analysis of the expected impacts on land use in Chile of projected climate-change scenarios in 2040 and 2070. We developed a farmland allocation model with associated labor employment at the municipal level driven by expected relative net incomes per hectare, constructed from local average per-hectare yields, regional average output prices and per-hectare production cost estimates. The sensitivities of cropland allocations to relative net-income changes were estimated using historical land allocations at the municipal level derived from the last two Chilean Agricultural Censuses. The results show that the impacts of climate changes will be mitigated by land-use adaptation, the main export-earning crops tending to move south; in aggregate, agricultural employment will decrease in all the climate-change scenarios; forestry and agriculture would likely suffer a loss in net-income generation under severe climate-change scenarios.

The Role of River Vigilance Committees to Address New Socio-Climatic Conditions in Chile: Insights from Ostrom’s Design Principles for Common-Pool Resource Institutions

“…If these conditions continue, the agricultural sector will be significantly affected. Due to climate change effects such as global warming, the main export-earning crops are expected to move south (resulting in land-use changes), and agricultural employment may decrease over the next few decades [44].…”

Towards Sustainable Agriculture in Chile, Reflections on the Role of Public Policy

“…For this reason, models that evaluate long-term effects consider the fact that farmers will be able to adapt, for example, by changing their crops to ones better adapted to the new climate. In Chile, different studies have quantified the long-term effect of climate changes, finding moderate reductions in the GDP of the agriculture and forestry sector -in the range of 2 to 5% (ECLAC, 2009(ECLAC, , 2012ODEPA, 2010;Ponce et al, 2014;Melo & Foster, 2021). These reductions could be primarily explained by reductions in water flows, especially in the agricultural areas of the center and north of the country.…”

The Impact of Forestry Industry Integration on the Forest Farmers' Income in China: A Theoretical and Empirical Study

“…There are many factors that affect farmers' income in forestry, which can be summarized into two aspects: i)The factors of the farmer household itself, such as the size of the household and the number of adult labor force (Pyi et al, 2015), the family cultivated land (Patricia et al, 2012), the forest land area (Lu et al, 2020), and the integration degree of forestry with agriculture and animal husbandry (Adriana et al,2019;Roberto et al,2015). ii) Factors other than the farmer's household, such as the state of forestry resources (Getachew et al, 2007), climatic conditions (Oscar & William, 2021), sudden natural disasters (Feng & Dai, 2019), forestry technology (Nambiar, 2021), forestry capital (Hari et al, 2017), and fiscal policy (Carlos et al,2020).…”