The Impact of Climate Change on Crop Production in West Africa: An Assessment for the Oueme River Basin in Benin

# The Author(s) 2011. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Climate change studies forWest Africa tend to predict a reduced potential for farming that will affect the food security situation of an already impoverished population. However, these studies largely ignore farmers ’ adaptations and market adjustments that mitigate predicted negative effects. The paper attempts to fill some of this gap through a spatially explicit evaluation of the impact of climate change on farm income in the Oueme River Basin (ORB), Benin. The ORB is in many respects representative for the middle belt of West Africa where the predominantly sparse occupation leaves potential for migration from more densely populated areas. We apply a number of structural, spatially explicit relationships estimated for the whole territory of Benin to simulate conditions in the ORB proper that are similar to those currently prevailing in the drier North, and the more humid South. Our scenario results factor out for the main crops cultivated the constituent effects on yields, area, and revenue per ton. We find that under average climate change conditions the current low yields are not reduced, provided that cropping patterns are adjusted, while price increases partly compensate for the remaining adverse effects on farmer income. Consequently, without any policy intervention, farm incomes remai