Will farmers fully adapt to monsoonal climate change through technological developments? An analysis of rice and livestock production in Thailand

The current paper tackles a critical question in climate change literature of whether farmers will be able to fully adapt to monsoonal climate changes owing to technological developments. Making use of the climate, agricultural and social data of Thailand from 1900 to 2015, this paper estimates a technological change instrumental variable by the growth of the normalized rice yield per hectare of land. The estimation shows that 0.98 of the growth in rice yield can be attributed to technological changes while the rest is accounted for by climate, soils and social factors. In the second stage regressions with the technological change indicator, the paper estimates the normalized numbers of the six most important types of live animals in Thailand: goats, chickens, cattle, sheep, pigs and buffaloes. Over the time period studied, the number of each of these live animals has increased vastly, except for buffaloes. The second-stage regressions show that the growth is largely attributable to technological changes, but monsoonal climate variables such as normalized monsoon precipitation ratio and normalized monsoon temperature are not significant factors. The results indicate that the rate of technological changes is overwhelming the rate of climate change on agriculture in Thailand.