Moderated by Keith Fuglie, USDA Economic Research Service

Estimating the Impact of CGIAR Research and Development on Global Poverty (Paper 1)

Presentation by Will Martin, IFPRI

Poverty reduction is a key goal of the agricultural research and development (R&D) undertaken by the CGIAR system. A great deal of work has demonstrated substantial productivity increases and high rates of returns from this R&D but providing reliable estimates of the resulting poverty reduction has proven challenging. This study builds on new estimates of productivity gains from Keith Fuglie and Ruben Echeverria. It uses a global Computable General Equilibrium model to capture impacts on commodity outputs and prices and then assesses the impacts on household incomes and poverty. To allow for changes in the marginal impacts of productivity growth on outputs, prices and household incomes, poverty impacts are estimated at five-yearly intervals by projecting the structure of households and economies back to the founding of the CGIAR system in 1971.

Estimating the effects of weather and climate change on agricultural productivity (Paper 2)

Presentation by Chris O'Donnell, University of Queensland

Explaining changes in productivity involves explaining changes in output and input quantities. Several economic models can be used for this purpose. This paper considers a model that accounts for weather and output price uncertainty. Changes in productivity are then explained in two steps. First, a stochastic frontier model is used to decompose a proper productivity index into measures of technical progress, environmental change, technical efficiency change, scale-and-mix efficiency change, and changes in statistical noise. Second, a system of input demand equations is used to further decompose the measure of scale-and-mix efficiency change into a measure of technical progress, a measure of input price change, and various measures of changes in expectations, allocative efficiency and statistical noise. The methodology is applied to U.S. agricultural data. The effects of weather and climate change on agricultural productivity are found to be small relative to the effects of changes in input prices.

The Link Between Extreme Heat and Crop Yields: Mechanisms, Consequences, & Practical Applications (Paper 3)

Presentation by Michael J. Roberts, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa

A fairly substantial literature now documents a strong and pervasive association between rainfed crop yields and extreme heat, a link that is not especially clear in agronomic models. This talk will review what we know about the underlying mechanisms of this link, how it varies over time and space, debate about its implications for climate change, and some practical applications link, including research into productivity enhancement, climate adaptation, crop forecasting, and risk management using weather-index insurance. The link can also be used as an instrument to identify supply and demand elasticities of agricultural commodities, which are essential for the evaluation of government policies.