The economic relevance of climate variables in agriculture: The case of Spain

Resumen

We estimate how climate variables affect price and acreage of productive farmland using the Ricardian approach. Furthermore, we use our estimations to evaluate the joint effects of possible climate changes within the time horizon of 2010 and 2050. Our results show that the price of rainfed land in Spain tends to increase but rainfed acreage decreases. On the other hand, the effect on irrigated farmland price and acreage presents some mixed results, however, in the long run the dominant pattern is clearly increasing for both prices and acreage.