THE EFFECT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON THE ECONOMY OF RAIN FED WHEAT (A CASE STUDY IN NORTHERN KHORASAN)

Abstract

Climate change is a phenomenon that has made the most concern in communities and decision making centers. This phenomenon has important effects on different aspects of human life. One of the most important crops that are affected by climate change is wheat. Accordingly, data and information of Northern Khorasan have been used to study the effects of climate change on rain-fed wheat yield. For this reason, climatic data of Bojnourd synoptic station from 1984 to 2010 and economic data of Northern Khorasan rain-fed wheat available in Jihad Keshavarzi administration were used to analyze previous situation and detecting climate change and determine a relationship between economic yield and climatic variables. To determine relationship between economy of rain-fed wheat and regional climate, maximum and minimum temperature, annual precipitation and also cost of wheat production, price of wheat and barley, and cropping area have been selected as independent variables and yield and income of wheat have been selected as dependent variables. In addition, for prediction of the amount of climatic elements in future, numerical climatic meso scale models HADCM and LARS-WG have been used. The results showed that climate change occurred in 30 past years and there is significant relation between logarithm of maximum and minimum temperature and annual precipitation, and wheat yield. Using resulted equation for yield and income of wheat and the results from numerical climatic model showing 0.5 degree Celsius increasing of minimum and maximum temperature and decreasing 25 mm of precipitation from 2010 to 2039 in the region, increasing in wheat yield (10 kg.ha-1) and income (250000 t. thousand Rial-1) have been predicted in this region.