The response of cereal crop production to climate variability in Botswana: An ARDL model analysis

Climate variability threatens cereal crop production in the Global South countries, such as Botswana. This study aims to examine the associations between climate variability and cereal crop production in Botswana at a national level, focusing more on temperature. The study employs time series data from 1969 to 2020, along with the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) and vector autoregression with exogenous variable models (VARX) to determine the associations between climate variability and Botswana’s most cultivated cereal crops, maize, and sorghum. The climate variables used are seasonal maximum surface air temperature, seasonal minimum surface air temperature, precipitation, and dry/wet season defined through the standardized precipitation index. The ARDL estimations show that maize is negatively associated with maximum temperatures and positively associated with the wet season in the long run. Sorghum is positively associated with dry season, maximum temperature, and precipitation in the long run. Results of the VARX model show that the relationship between temperature and production of both cereal crops is not statistically significant. The associations between cereal crops and climatic variables might indicate that the future focus should be on sorghum production and heat-tolerant maize varieties. Further research on the physiological and morphological reactions of the two crops to temperature may be needed. This may assist in formulating policies aimed at reducing cereal crop losses from projected variations in climate in the future.