DOI: 10.3390/su18136660 ISSN: 2071-1050

Climate Change and Agricultural Production Resilience: Cross-Country Evidence Based on Network Meta-Analysis

Fangyan Bai, Chunyan Li, Qi Ban, Wenya Zhang

Climate warming and the increasing frequency of extreme climate events have exerted a systemic shock on global Agricultural Production Resilience (APR). Clarifying the impact mechanism is essential to ensuring global food security. This study employs a cross-country network meta-analysis framework. We systematically synthesize 76 empirical studies published between 2005 and 2025. This paper aims to quantify the impacts of five climatic factors on APR. These factors include extreme high temperature, extreme drought, extreme flooding, precipitation variability, and temperature anomaly. Heterogeneity and moderating effects across latitudinal regions, agricultural production modes, agricultural structures, and irrigation conditions are examined, followed by robustness tests and publication bias analysis. The results show that: (1) At a cross-country scale, all five climatic factors have significant negative impacts on APR. The intensity of impact ranks in descending order as extreme flooding, extreme high temperature, extreme drought, precipitation variability, and temperature anomaly, with extreme climates as the dominant risk factor. (2) The impact effects exhibit significant latitudinal heterogeneity. The absolute value of adverse shocks to APR in low-latitude regions is markedly larger than that in mid- and high-latitude countries; extreme floods constitute the primary risk for low-latitude areas, while extreme high temperatures dominate mid- and high-latitude regions. (3) Rain-fed agriculture and crop farming suffer substantially stronger climatic impacts than irrigated agriculture and animal husbandry. (4) Agricultural structure and production modes exert prominent moderating effects. A higher share of crop cultivation and rain-fed farmland corresponds to stronger adverse climatic impacts, whereas animal husbandry, facility agriculture, and well-developed irrigation facilities can partially mitigate such disturbances. This study provides empirical evidence for countries and regions to implement differentiated adaptation policies within agricultural climate governance frameworks and enhance APR.

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