A Study of the Effects of Natural Fertility, Weather and Productive Inputs in Chinese Agriculture

In this paper the variations across China of climate, other natural growing conditions and anthropogenic farm inputs are used as a natural experiment to identify the contributions of each to the production of corn, potatoes, rice, soybeans and wheat. Crop production functions are estimated across prefectures using land, labor, fertilizer, machinery and irrigation inputs, as well as estimates of the average net primary productivity (NPP) for each prefecture during the growing seasons. NPP is the net assimilation of carbon into the plants as a result of natural growing conditions and the estimates are taken from projections of the Terrestrial Ecosystems Model. The results indicate that through the use of anthropogenic inputs farmers have made effective adaptations to differences in natural outputs of NPP in each crop. Thus, the research suggests that there is a substantial potential for adjustments to climate change. In addition, the results also suggest that there is substantial scope for further increases in food production in China.