Climate change impacts on agricultural production in Ethiopia using panel data

The agricultural sector in Ethiopia is primarily characterized by smallholder farming, which suffers from low productivity. Climate change is also one of the major constraints that hampers crop productivity. This study aims to analyze the current and future impacts of climate change on agricultural production using current data and the latest climate change scenarios. Panel data from the fourth (2018/19) and fifth (2021/22) waves of the Ethiopian Socioeconomic Survey were utilized. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Prediction of Worldwide Energy Resources and the World Climate Research Program websites served as the main sources of historical and simulated climate data. The Beijing Climate Center Climate System Model, Community Earth System Model version 2, the Meteorological Research Institute Earth System Model version 2.0, and Medium-resolution version of the Norwegian Earth System Model version 2 Global Circulation Models were employed to get the simulated climate data from 2015 to 2100 in Ethiopia under four different scenarios. The output from the Ricardian model indicates that annual temperature has a statistically significant negative impact on both current and future crop production in Ethiopia, while annual precipitation has a positive impact. The study also reveals that current and future climate change has a heterogeneous impact on various types of agro-ecologies, while exhibiting a homogeneous impact on six major cereal crops. Therefore, policymakers should design appropriate climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies to reduce both the causes and effects of climate change, respectively.