Productive sustainability and climate adaptation strategies in agriculture and development are key goals of global public policy. Understanding how agricultural technology can boost productivity in sectors like cattle ranching, and how rising temperatures directly and indirectly affect human well-being is essential for shaping effective policies in both developed and developing countries. The first chapter examines the impact of introduced pastures on lowland ranching productivity in Latin America. The final two chapters evaluate how rising temperatures influence human capital accumulation and crop yields in Colombia and the US, respectively, and how students' and farmers' behaviors modify these effects.The first chapter examines three critical questions about introduced pasture adoption in Colombian lowland ranching. First, it estimates the impact of using Brachiaria grass, a high-nutrient grass forage variety, on farm-level carrying capacity and livestock revenues. Second, it assesses whether combining complementary practices like fertilization and weed control boosts the impact of using these pastures. Third, it evaluates the potential reduction in land demands for cattle ranching attributable to introduced grasses. The study follows an instrumental variable framework, combining a cross-sectional representative sample of Colombian lowland ranchers, historical data on violence and weather, and spatial information on the location of R&D centers that disseminate knowledge about intensive grazing systems. The use of pastures significantly increases farms' carrying capacities, although at levels below those suggested by agronomic trials. In addition, our analysis suggests that gains from productivity are more significant when combined with complementary practices and that, in the absence of these introduced pastures, reaching similar output levels would have potentially required twice as much land as currently used.The second chapter studies the impact of exposure to increasing temperatures on human capital accumulation, with particular attention to the potentially differentiated effects between rural and urban settings. Combining rich microdata from a high-stakes, national-level high-school exit exam in Colombia (Saber 11) between 2014 and 2019 with weather-station-level information, we use a fixed-effect estimation to measure the effect of increasing average temperatures on student success. We find that a one degree Celsius temperature increase significantly decreases math and overall test scores in urban settings, while there is an apparent positive effect among rural students. Leveraging time-use data, we find evidence of individuals in rural areas responding to increases in temperature by reallocating time towards off-farm activities, which are human capital intensive. Finally, we use information from the announcement of a national scholarship program that introduced exogenous variation in the stakes of Saber 11, to find that the impact of the scholarship policy decreases as temperatures increase. Our analysis underscores how the effectiveness of incentive-based policies may be hindered in the context of a warming world.The third chapter explores the impacts of heat on crop yields and crop production decisions among sorghum farmers in Kansas, U.S. This analysis addresses a two-part question often overlooked in climate econometrics. Specifically, we examine whether (a) the unbalanced nature of yield panel data likely reflects strategic behavior by farmers when deciding whether to grow sorghum, and (b) whether this leads to estimation bias from sample selection. Our results suggest that (1) a farm’s decision to produce sorghum in a given year is likely a climate-sensitive response, indicating an underlying climate adaptation strategy, and (2) accounting for this response as a driver of sample selection results in lower estimates of heat impacts on yields compared to the existing literature. Our results highlight the need to further consider how farm data discontinuity in long-term panels can affect the consistency of traditional fixed-effect estimates.In conclusion, livestock farming still needs to boost productivity, and the first chapter offers insights into how agricultural technologies, like introduced pastures, can help achieve this. Meanwhile, the second and third chapters emphasize the importance of accurately assessing the impacts of rising temperatures on human welfare---specifically in terms of human capital and food production--and contribute to the broader policy discussion on global climate adaptation strategies.
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