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The role of climate-adaptive technological innovation in promoting agriculture carbon efficiency: impact and heterogeneity in economic development

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Abstract

Achieving global climate change mitigation targets requires low-carbon production in agriculture. In such an endeavor, a new classification of climate-adaptive technology is defined to affect agriculture towards the low-carbon direction, but such an impact has seldom been empirically tested in the literature. In this paper, we investigate the impact of climate-adaptive technological innovation on agricultural carbon efficiency, a proxy for low-carbon agriculture. We use a stochastic directional distance function framework and a cross-country dataset covering 38 OECD countries. Additionally, we test the heterogeneous impact, considering that regional economic development is a crucial condition for deploying advanced technologies. The findings show that climate-adaptive technological innovation can promote carbon efficiency in agriculture, and this aggregate effect hides significant heterogeneity at different levels of economic development. The higher the economic development level is, the better climate-adaptive technological innovation contributes to improving agricultural carbon efficiency. Then, related policy implications are set forth.

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All the data and materials are included in the manuscript.

Notes

  1. It has been proven that there is a large amount of organic and inorganic carbon in the soil, and agricultural production activity can destroy the soil structure, releasing GHG emissions from cultivated land (IPCC 2019).

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Funding

The paper is funded by National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 22&ZD083), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 72173097), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 72003145), China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant no.2020M683437), and the Humanities and Social Science Research Project of the Ministry of Education of China (Grant no. 18YJC790194).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Economics and Management, Northwest A & F University, Yangling, Shaanxi, 712100, People’s Republic of China

    Rui Shi, Liuyang Yao & Minjuan Zhao

  2. School of Economics and Finance, **’an Jiaotong University, **’an, Shaanxi, 710049, People’s Republic of China

    Zheming Yan

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  1. Rui Shi
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  2. Liuyang Yao
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Contributions

Rui Shi: conceptualization, formal analysis, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, methodology, and validation. Liuyang Yao: writing—review and editing, grammar, and review. Minjuan Zhao: supervision, funding acquisition, and project administration. Zheming Yan: supervision, funding acquisition, project administration, resources, software, and writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Minjuan Zhao.

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Shi, R., Yao, L., Zhao, M. et al. The role of climate-adaptive technological innovation in promoting agriculture carbon efficiency: impact and heterogeneity in economic development. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 126029–126044 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-31205-0

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