The impact of cereal crop diversification on farm labor productivity under changing climatic conditions

Climate change poses a serious threat to the stability of national and global food systems. Agricultural productivity growth is needed to meet increasing global food demand and land use competition. Based on a 2009–2012 panel of 133 cereal farms in Austria, we evaluate if cereal crop diversification can increase both farm labor productivity and resilience to adverse climatic conditions. To identify the productive implications of the interaction between cereal crop diversity and climatic conditions, we apply a partial correlated random effects model accounting for potential endogeneity. Our results indicate that diversified farms are more resilient to reductions in growing season rainfall, but in years with higher rainfall levels diversified farms tend to be less productive. We find that projected climate change induced temperature increases are associated with a considerable productivity decline that cannot be attenuated by cereal crop diversification.