How can land-use be adapted to climate change? An economic analysis for Israel (Briefing 3.2)

Abstract

We developed a regional scale economic model named VALUE (Vegetative Agricultural Land Use Economic) to effectively estimate the impacts of future changes on vegetative agriculture in Israel. The objective of VALUE is to simulate the behavior of farmers under climate change (precipitation), the availability of irrigation water, and different prices and limitation of water. The latter changes can be caused by climate change, but also by global processes such as trade conditions or technological advancements. The VALUE model was developed and calibrated for 21 “ecological regions” in Israel. In each region, the model incorporates 45 crops and calculates the optimal land allocation among them, as well as the allocation of freshwater, treated waste-water and brackish water. The allocations of the different water sources are determined to maximize farming profits given the simulated constraints on land properties and irrigation water. For Israel, we found that longterm economic losses stem from yield potential reductions driven by forecasted increases in temperature. Our overall findings indicate that adaptation to climate change should be done by using more heat-tolerant crop varieties and adaptive technologies.