The Impacts of Climate Change on Agricultural Farm Profits in the U.S.

Global warming has been an issue lately in many aspects because it has been in increasing trend since 1980s. This paper estimates the climate change effects on U.S. agriculture using the pooled cross-section farm profit model. The data are mainly based on the annual Agricultural Resource Management Survey (ARMS) from USDA for the time period between 2000 and 2009 in the 48 contiguous States. For climate measure, growing season drought indices (the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and Crop Moisture Index (CMI)) are applied to the analysis and both indices have a negative relationship with temperature. The estimates indicate that one unit increase in PDSI (CMI) leads to 5.5% (13.9%), 4% (9%), and 5% (14%) increase in farm profits for all farms, crop farms, and livestock farms. This paper provides several contributions to the literature. First, the data set is very rare and unique national survey that provides an individual farm level observation. Therefore, it gives more detailed farm structure and financial information for the analysis compared to other studies. Second, drought indices (PDSI and CMI) are used for estimating the impact of weather on farm profits while temperature, precipitation, and growing degree-days are typical weather variables in literatures