Jeanne de Montalembert

Mitigating Climate Vulnerability: the Crop Diversification Effect

with Ferry, M.

Can adaptation strategies mitigate the impact of climate variability on household food insecurity? Using longitudinal data on Malagasy rural households from 2011 to 2014 and a two-way fixed-effect model with an instrumental variable to address endogeneity issues, we find that crop diversification can reduce the adverse effects of drought anomalies and rising minimum temperatures. Specifically, cultivating 3 to 8 crops, particularly fruits and cereals, proves to be effective in mitigating or even offsetting these impacts. However, our results also indicate that crop diversification may exacerbate the detrimental effects of higher maximum temperatures, possibly due to limited availability of heat-resilient crops. These findings raise concerns about the viability of crop diversification as an adaptive strategy under certain climate conditions and underscore the need for context-specific recommendations.

Presented at: PhD Workshop Université Paris Dauphine - Mines Paris Tech (2022); Dauphine Doctoral Days (2023); Welfare and Policy Conference* (2023); German Development Economic Conference (2023); Journée de Microéconomie Appliquée (2023); AFSE* (2023); European Association of Environmental and Resources Economists (2023); International Conference of Development Economics (2023); French Association of Environmental and Resources Economists (2023); International Conference of Agricultural Economics* (2024).

*: Presented by coauthor(s)

Received the Honorable Mention for the T.W. Schultz Prize for Best Contributed Paper at ICAE (2024)