How growers adjust land-use decisions to a changing climate has important consequences for food supplies and environmental impact. In this paper, we examine changes in agricultural land use as an adaptive response to long-term climate impacts, using unique parcel-level data in Central Valley, California – a major agricultural hub worldwide. We combine parcel-level characteristics data with cropland data and long-run historical climate variables to assess the climate-induced land-use transition. We find that growers in the Central Valley are transitioning from annual crops to perennial crops in response to changing climates. Analysis of land-use with heterogeneous land quality suggests that the share of perennial crops increased 11% in high-quality lands and 7% in low-quality lands.
Rising temperatures due to climate change can increase dust particulate concentrations leading to lower crop productivity and resulting in a decline in farmland values. Using pooled data with 9,300 observations representing 7,987 agricultural parcels that were sold in the Central Valley of California between 2010 and 2017, we estimate a Hedonic regression equation with month- and year-of-sale fixed effects. Ricardian estimates indicate that dust levels have a negative net effect on farmland values and are highly significant with an inverted U-shaped response curve.
Well-resourced interest groups often have the upper hand in legislative processes. They have capacity to lobby, making routine contact with policymakers to share opinions and expertise. Yet interest groups that do not lobby have other less costly ways to communicate preferences to policymakers. We develop an index of interest group diversity and show that letters of support from smaller, less politically active groups increase the likelihood a bill passes committee, particularly when writers differ in their organizational profiles. Our investigation focuses on the struggle over policies that respond to the impacts of climate change—an issue mobilizing a huge range of organized interests and posing great risks to contemporary society. We leverage a unique opportunity to observe both lobbying and letter writing on bills introduced in the California legislature. Findings suggest that interest groups with fewer resources can be effective policy advocates in shifting policy landscapes, even when lobbying occurs.
This paper estimates the impact of climate change on the expectations of buyers in California’s farmland market. Focusing on the Central Valley of California and make use of a geo-referenced dataset on farmland, combined with high-resolution spatial data that indicates the distribution of crop types and cropland. We use panel data on repeated farmland sales to estimate a hedonic regression equation with parcel and year of sale fixed effects. The results show a 3% gain in farmland value due to the transition to perennial crops, and a loss of 2.2% of farmland value due to continued farming of annual crops.