U.S. Interstate Trade Will Mitigate the Negative Impact of Climate Change On Crop Profit

Join the Department of Social Sciences for this Great Problems, Great Minds seminar series event featuring guest speaker Sandy Dall'Erba, a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Climate change is expected to increase the probability of droughts in some areas, and trade is expected to help mitigate the adverse effect of future climate conditions on agriculture. Guest speaker Sandy Dall’Erba will show how in the U.S., trade and crop growers’ profits depend on both local and trade partners’ weather conditions. Looking at future weather data, Dall’Erba’s projections convert the crop grower’s expected loss without trade into expected profit, challenging the estimates of current climate impact literature and concluding that trade is likely to act as a $14.5 billion mitigation tool in the near future.