Weather Shocks and Economic Triggers of Cropland Change in the US: A Fine-scale Spatial Analysis
Presented by:
Luoye Chen
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Monday, January 24, 2022
12:00 pm-1:30 pm
Taylor-Hibbard Seminar Room (Rm103)
Online - https://go.wisc.edu/jmydkq
Land conversions between cultivated cropland and grassland are a pressing concern because of their substantial implications for food supply and ecosystem services. However, there has been limited understanding of the frequency and determinants of cropgrass conversions. Using high-resolution data on 500-meter land parcels in the rainfed United States from 2001 to 2017, we provide the first large-scale investigation of how US farmers adjust crop-grass conversions in response to weather shocks and commodity price fluctuations. We also characterize heterogeneity in these adjustments across land parcels with different biophysical attributes using generic machine learning inference. We find that the contemporary rainfall shocks, long-term climate change, and lagged received commodity prices jointly affect the likelihood of crop-grass conversions. The effects of rainfall shocks and price fluctuations on cropgrass conversions are mainly confined to land parcels at the margin of agricultural production, with relatively lower water storage capacity, less productivity, and steeper slopes. These findings suggest that crop-grass conversion is not a static phenomenon and that it is important to examine how it evolves in response to various factors that may change over time.
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