The adoption and impact of engineering‐type measures to address climate change: evidence from the major grain‐producing areas in China

Employing an endogenous switching regression model, we investigate the drivers underlying the adaptations made by farm households and their impacts on crop net incomes for adopters and nonadopters, based on a large panel survey data set across the major grain‐producing provinces in China. The results show that: (i) access to public climate information and technical or physical support increases the likelihood that farmers adapt to climate change by undertaking irrigation and/or drainage measures; and (ii) decisions to adapt increased crop yield, but they did not significantly increase crop profit margins. This point appears to have been ignored by previous studies. Based on these new empirical results, the paper suggests that government should continue to provide climate information and various types of supports to improve farmers’ adaptation abilities and help to reduce the levels of factor input by, for example, substituting organic for chemical fertiliser inputs. Such government‐led policies should be supported alongside the implementation of domestic agricultural supply‐side reform.     

Willingness to accept compensation for land fallowing: results from a survey of village representatives in Northern China

Economic instruments have been increasingly adopted by governments around the world to address water scarcity problems because of their potential to achieve environmental outcomes in more cost‐effective ways. This is the first study to estimate the willingness to accept compensation for land fallowing in rural China. Using survey data collected from village representatives in Northern China (mainly village leaders, party secretaries and village accountants), our results suggest that in groundwater irrigated sample villages, at least 28 per cent of respondents have a compensation expectation lower than the standard level of 500 yuan/mu/year for one season of fallowing set by the Government. Water scarcity measures such as irrigation supply reliability and depth‐to‐groundwater within a village are found to have statistically significant effects on the likelihood of fallowing land in groundwater irrigated villages.