Abstract
Purpose: This paper evaluates the topic of climate change by considering the temperature change and agricultural lands in Turkey. Temperature change and its impact on agricultural lands were estimated.
Design/Methodology/Approach: Ninety years of period in Turkey was used to show how the temperature changed, and it was focused on the latest years for the agricultural lands. Panel data method was used to estimate the impact of temperature on agricultural lands. District and year level fixed effects were controlled.
Findings: The results show that almost all the temperature increase in Turkey occurred after the 1990s. The econometric model results show that a 1 degree increase in the temperature would decrease agricultural lands by approximately 3% and 9%.
Originality/Value: The impact of climate change is significantly heterogeneous across countries and regions. For instance, the temperature change may positively affect the yields in one country, but negatively in other countries. Therefore, because of this heterogeneity across regions, new studies considering other countries or regions are needed. This paper evaluates the temperature change with a rich dataset in terms of the time period and different regions. Another contribution of the paper is that it evaluates the impact on agricultural lands, instead of on the yield or production. Because climate change affects the yields, and consequently, the change reflects on the income of the farmers. Therefore, climate change significantly affects farmers' land decisions. This paper shows that the climate change in Turkey negatively affects farmers land decisions and finds farmers decrease their lands due to the climate. It is emphasized that climate change should be considered in the current discussion of reasons for decreasing land that occurred in Turkey.