Climate Change and Agriculture: Do Environmental Preservation and Ecosystem Services Matter?

Climate change is expected to cause several impacts on agriculture. Nonetheless, adaptive strategies and environmental sustainability may affect the ability to cope with these impacts. We analyze how agricultural technologies and the ecosystem diversity represented by the land cover have attenuated the impacts of extreme climate events on agricultural production in the São Paulo state, Brazil. Analyses are based on a panel with information for 568 municipalities between 1990 and 2014. We first use multivariate statistical analysis to define six groups of localities according to their levels of agricultural development and land cover. Secondly, based on fixed effect estimates, we analyze the relationship between the dynamics of extreme climate events and agricultural production in each group of localities. Results highlight that both technological and environmental factors could contribute to increases in agricultural production. More importantly, agriculture practiced with high levels of environmental preservation tends to be more resilient to extreme temperature and precipitation events.