Wheat yield convergence and its driving factors in countries along the Belt and Road

ABSTRACT

Improving the wheat yield of countries along the Belt and Road (BR) plays a core role in ensuring global food security. However, little attention has been paid to the wheat yield variation and the determinants across these countries. This paper analyzes wheat yield convergence in countries along the BR using the club-convergence test. The empirical results show that instead of one convergence for all countries along the BR, the wheat yields are converging into three clubs. Furthermore, we investigate the impact of climate change and agricultural production technology on wheat yield convergence, and find that countries along the BR with a one degree Celsius increase in temperature are 36.5% (32.7%) more likely to converge to the high-level yield club. This may be related to the lower frequency of frost and higher photosynthetic capacity of wheat. We also find that a one kilogram increase in fertilizer application per hectare will result in a 0.4% (0.5%) higher probability of countries along the BR converging to the high-level yield club. Countries along the BR should pay more attention to coordinating production technologies and climate change to ensure food security.

KEYWORDS:

• Club convergence
• countries along the BR
• wheat yield
• temperature
• intensity of fertilizer use

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ The countries along the BR are among the major wheat-producing countries, but the US, Argentina, Canada, and European countries such as France or Germany are also very important. This paper focuses mainly on the countries along the BR.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Project of National Natural Science Foundation of China [No. 72003074]; the Philosophy and Social Sciences Project of Ministry of Education [No. 19YJC630191]; Fundamental Research Funds for the Central University [No. 2662020JGPYG15].