Millions depend on crops such as maize and rice, but production could fall in a warmer world. Oregon State University economist John Antle and an international network of colleagues are looking at the options for farmers in Africa, South Asia and North America.

In the Vihiga district of western Kenya, farms average little more than an acre. Corn is the dominant crop and source of sustenance, but most households run short six to 10 months of the year. They supplement with beans, groundnuts, bananas and vegetables and make money by selling milk, if they are lucky enough to own a cow. Throughout the country, corn production is declining, and researchers are urgently searching for drought-tolerant varieties to meet the needs of a growing population. For people already on the edge, adapting to climate change is a life-and-death matter.

In fact, scientists say, projections of a warmer, drier climate in East Africa could cut food production as it is currently practiced on 82 percent of the farms in Vihiga. This rural area doesn’t have far to fall. More than half of its farm households already earn less than $1 per person per day.

John Antle sees a better future for the people of Vihiga. By shifting from corn to more drought-tolerant crops such as sweet potatoes, farmers could offset much if not all of the negative impacts of climate change. Moreover, since sweet potatoes are high in vitamin A and the vines make good livestock fodder, they could improve nutrition for their families, feed their cattle and maintain milk production.

For the Oregon State University professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics (AREc), Vihiga demonstrates the need for climate-change adaptation policies. “Until now, adaptation has been politically incorrect in the climate world,” he says. “We see more and more evidence that real changes are happening, and we had better start thinking more about adapting.”

With a grant from the German international development agency GTZ, Antle and a research team from Wageningen University in the Netherlands and international research centers are evaluating the impacts of climate change on agriculture and the potential benefits of alternative cropping systems in East Africa. The simulation models that Antle and collaborators have developed over the past two decades are now being used by researchers globally to assess impacts of climate and other environmental changes in agriculture.

In the Great Plains and Midwest, he and co-author Susan Capalbo, head of AREc, have used these tools to study the potential for cropland to store carbon under conservation and reduced tillage systems. They are partnering with colleagues at OSU, Washington State, the University of Idaho and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to evaluate wheat in the Pacific Northwest under a changing climate (see “Against the Grain“).

Global Food Supplies

“For about a 150 years, the real price of wheat has gone down,” Antle says, even as global population has risen. “So why is that? Because supply has gone up faster than demand. That is the Green Revolution story, the scientific revolution that began after World War II and allowed agriculture to expand production. So the big question is, Are we now at a turning point where that’s no longer going to be true?”

Two factors — increasing demand from larger, more affluent populations; flattening growth in food supplies, as the Green Revolution bumps into production limits — are contributing to higher food prices. In the short term, he adds, there is still plenty of arable land available, and farmers can shift crops from fiber and fuel to food. But rising incomes in developing countries are already adding to demand and are likely to continue to do so well into the future.

He points to China, which, despite increasing incomes for a portion of its people, still has massive poverty. “People think that China is now this rich country. That’s wrong. There’s a small proportion of people in China who are well-off now, but if you get away from the coast, there are still a billion really, really poor people. That’s true for India and sub-Saharan Africa too.”

Those countries will continue to transition to a higher standard of living, he says. “For a long time, people have said, when the rest of the world tries to have a lifestyle like ours, we’ll be in trouble. Well, that’s what’s happening.”

On top of that, climate change poses an additional threat. Somalia and other parts of East Africa are already in their 16th year of drought. In Kenya, which hosts refugees fleeing violence and famine in Somalia, crop failures are common, and the country has to import corn to meet growing demand.

In their research, Antle and his colleagues combined available data on farm production in two Kenyan districts — Vihiga and Machakos — with the results of two climate models to estimate how new sweet potato varieties, milk, livestock and drought-tolerant corn might maintain food production and farm incomes in the future. Most previous studies of climate adaptation apply to large regions, such as whole countries. Their study was one of the first to compare the potential consequences of several climate change adaptation strategies for agriculture with this much detail.

“We’re trying to understand these systems, what characteristics make them work better or worse and what kinds of crop-breeding activities would work with changes in climate,” says Antle.

Urban markets offer farmers new opportunities, says JunJie Wu, holder of the Emery Castle Professorship of Resource and Rural Economics (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

But the benefits of the urban-rural interface can outweigh the detractions — at least in the short term, according to Oregon State University’s JunJie Wu, holder of the Emery Castle Chair of Resource and Rural Economics.

“Urbanization is not necessarily a bad thing for struggling rural communities,” says Wu, an economist in the College of Agricultural Sciences. “It creates new opportunities along with the challenges.”

Locally Grown, Higher Value

As populations creep outward from metropolitan centers, farmers are finding novel market niches in this affluent customer base, according to a new study by Wu and colleagues at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Malawi and the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. High on the shopping lists of these new customers are high-value crops such as cut flowers, ornamental trees and shrubs for landscaping, tree-ripened fruit, locally grown wines, organic vegetables and u-pick berries — crops that generate more income per acre than traditional commodities like wheat and corn.

The study — an analysis of county data from Oregon, Washington, Idaho and California — also found that demand for “inputs” such as farm machinery, seed and feed goes up during the early stages of urbanization. So does demand for “outputs” such as food processing facilities. Eventually, however, the “critical mass” of agricultural activity wanes as cropland disappears. Suppliers and processors can no longer sustain their businesses.

“Urbanization has a significant impact on agricultural infrastructure, farm production costs, and net farm income,” Wu concludes. “Still, the agriculture-related opportunities of urbanization outweigh the challenges in terms of the impact on farm income.”

Wu, who spent several months in China and England last year as a Fulbright scholar, has been analyzing trends in rural economics since coming to the United States from China more than three decades ago. But his roots in agriculture go all the way back to a small farm in Henan Province where his parents still grow wheat and corn for sale and vegetables for home consumption.

Not Just a Job

In the tradition of OSU’s Emery Castle, a leader in the field of resource economics and former president of the prestigious think-tank Resources for the Future, Wu not only delves into the effects of urbanization on agricultural economies, but also studies the environmental ramifications of land-use policies. Recent research topics include the impact of conservation programs on land values and how businesses make decisions for environmental compliance.

He loves his work so much, it feels more like a “hobby” than a job, he says. And for him, teaching is every bit as rewarding as research.

“Every time one of my students finishes his or her degree, I feel a sense of satisfaction,” he says. “I feel that I did something important.”

In a study funded by the Oregon Transportation Research and Education Consortium (OTREC) and the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) in 2006, she led the development of three models to examine the effects of mileage fees on how much people drive, how the fees would be distributed among rural and urban motorists and how the tax change would affect different income groups.

Using data from a 2001 national transportation survey, McMullen found that shifting from the gas tax to a mileage fee made little difference in how much motorists would actually pay and thus had little or no effect on how much they drive. She also showed that mileage fees would be slightly more regressive than the gasoline tax. That is, motorists with the lowest incomes would pay a small increase, less than 1 percent of their income, under a mileage fee program. However, that pales in comparison to the more than 5 percent increase that occurred when gasoline prices roughly doubled from 2001 to 2006.

Comparing urban and rural residents, McMullen found that rural drivers would pay slightly less under mileage fees. Even though rural motorists tend to drive more miles, they also tend to have more pickups and other vehicles that get lower fuel mileage. Owners of fuel-efficient vehicles would pay slightly more under a mileage fee system.

A lack of car sales data prevented McMullen and her team from evaluating the impact of mileage fees on vehicle purchasing preferences.

OTREC honored McMullen with its first Researcher of the Year Award in 2009 for her leadership in the analysis. In March 2010, she was elected president of the Transportation Research Forum, an international independent organization of researchers and other professionals.

Her report, Techniques for Assessing the Socio-Economic Effects of Vehicle Mileage Fees, was published in 2008 and is available online.