Climate security

Climate change will affect farmland bottom line: Economist

Over the next 70 to 100 years, our climate is projected to change dramatically. The sector that is most likely to be affected by these changes is agriculture. A number of studies support this assertion, but relatively few look at the effect of climate change on agriculture from a comprehensive economic perspective, says a University of Illinois economist.

An interdisciplinary team from the University of Illinois recently investigated the effects of climate change on farmland values in the Southwestern United States.

“We chose to look at farmland values because they reflect the sum of future expected profits and account for adaptation. And that’s exactly what climate change is about: long-term change and adaptation,” University of Illinois economist Sandy Dall’Erba says in a news release.

The team focused on a single climate region, the U.S. Southwest, where climate changes are expected to make farming even more difficult than in other regions.