Rising Temperatures and Changing Crop Production? Exploring Climate Change Impacts on Global Agriculture

Abstract

Climate change poses increasing risks to global agricultural productivity, making understanding of its effects on crop production essential. This study analyses how rising temperatures and accumulating atmospheric CO2 reshape the productive dynamics of wheat, rice, corn, oats, barley, potato, sugar cane, and sunflower production during 2000–2023 using Vector Autoregression, Granger causality, impulse response functions, forecast error variance decomposition, and threshold regression. Granger causality analysis identified a statistically significant predictive relationship between temperature and wheat production, whereas no statistically significant predictive effects were detected for rice, corn, oats, barley, potato, sugar cane, or sunflower production. Impulse response functions showed differentiated crop responses, with corn exhibiting temporary positive adjustments, rice predominantly negative responses, and wheat delayed structural shifts following temperature shocks. Forecast error variance decomposition further revealed substantial differences in climate sensitivity across crops, indicating that sunflower and sugar cane production were largely driven by their own dynamics, whereas rice, corn, potato, oats, and barley were comparatively more influenced by external climatic and economic shocks. Threshold regression identified crop-specific non-linear responses for six crops, whereas oats and barley did not reject the null hypothesis of linearity once critical atmospheric CO2 concentrations were exceeded, confirming that the relationship between temperature and agricultural production changes across climatic regimes. These findings emphasise that climate change does not affect all crops uniformly and support the adoption of crop-specific adaptation strategies, including climate-responsive cultivation practices, targeted irrigation, drought-resistant varieties, and sustainable land management. The study provides evidence-based insights to support climate adaptation policies and strengthen the resilience of global agricultural production systems.