SOURCE:

Faculty: Social Sciences
Department: Economics

CONTRIBUTORS:

Anuforo, C. C.
Nwogwugwu, U. C. C.

ABSTRACT:

This study examined the economic impact of climate change on agricultural production in Nigeria. We estimated and simulated the impact of climate change on aggregate (sum total of crop production, livestock production, forestry production and fish production) agricultural output in Nigeria for the period 1970 – 2015. Since the impact of climate change on crop production, livestock production, forestry production and fish production is not the same, the study estimated disaggregated agricultural output model using cointegration analysis, error correction mechanism and impulse response functions (IRFs).The results indicate that climate factors have significant impact on both aggregate and specific agricultural outputs in both the short term and long term. In order to account for the asymmetric impact of climate change on different agricultural outputs in Nigeria, we assessed the elasticities of specific agricultural output to climate change in Nigeria. As expected, the impacts of climate change on agricultural output differ across output/product. Except forestry, variations in CO2 emission has negative significant effect on both aggregate and other components of agricultural output. Rainfall variation has significant positive effect on both aggregate and all the components of agriculture. The effect of temperature was however found to be mild over the period. Based on the findings, the conclusion that climate changes are important factors emerges. The study therefore, recommends among other things that Nigerian government needs to give agriculture a serious priority, and that policy to minimize the effects of current climate change (especially, CO2) should be pursued. Again, there is equally an urgent need to raise awareness of rural farmers about effective weather and climate risk management and the sustainable use of weather and climate information for agricultural production in Nigeria.