How Agricultural Insurance and Farmland Infrastructure Affect Grain Production Resilience Under Climate Shocks in China

This study defines grain production resilience as the stability of grain output under climate-related disturbances, measured by the negative value of the three-year rolling coefficient of variation of grain output. It incorporates agricultural insurance and farmland infrastructure into a unified analytical framework and treats climate shocks as state variables to examine their effects on grain production resilience and their interaction. Using panel data for 31 provinces in China from 2008 to 2024, this study constructs temperature and precipitation shock indices based on ERA5 data and estimates a panel smooth transition regression model. The results show that climate shocks significantly weaken grain production resilience, and their effects are nonlinear and state dependent. Farmland infrastructure has a relatively stable positive effect, whereas agricultural insurance plays a weaker role. Under temperature shocks, the two policy tools tend to exhibit a substitutive relationship. Under precipitation shocks, however, their relationship varies across shock regimes and becomes more complementary only under higher-shock conditions. These findings suggest that grain production support policies should be adjusted according to the type and intensity of climate shocks.