Can Land Fragmentation Reduce the Exposure of Rural Households to Weather Variability?

Stefanija Veljanoska ()
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Stefanija Veljanoska: Paris School of Economics, UniversitŽ de Paris 1 PanthŽon-Sorbonne, UniversitŽ Paris-Sud

No 2017.08, Working Papers from FAERE - French Association of Environmental and Resource Economists

Abstract: Climate change continuously affects African farmers that operate in rain-fed environments. Coping with weather risk through credit and insurance markets is almost inexistent as these markets are imperfect in the African economies. Even though land fragmentation is often considered as a barrier to agricultural productivity, this article aims at analyzing whether land fragmentation, as an insurance alternative, is able to reduce farmers' exposure to weather variability. In order to address this research question, I use the Living Standards Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) data on Uganda. After dealing with the endogeneity of land fragmentation, I find that higher land fragmentation decreases the loss of crop yield when households experience rain deviations. Therefore, policy makers should be cautious with land consolidation programs.

Keywords: climate change; land fragmentation; rainfall; yield; insurance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q12 Q15 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2017-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dev, nep-env and nep-ias
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http://faere.fr/pub/WorkingPapers/Veljanoska_FAERE_WP2017.08.pdf First version, 2017 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fae:wpaper:2017.08

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