Turning constraints into gains: Climate-smart agriculture adoption improves maize yield and yield stability under production constraints

Climate change threats global crop yield, particularly in vulnerable regions like Henan Province in China, where maize yield remains low and highly variable. To address these challenges, Climate-smart Agriculture (CSA) offers a promising solution. Using cross-sectional data from 432 maize farmers, this study constructs a CSA adoption index and applies a Multinomial Endogenous Switching Regression (MESR) and Random Forest (RF) to assess and validate the impact of CSA adoption on maize yield. Results show higher CSA adoption level weakens key production constraints including poor soil fertility and extreme weather conditions, and shifts yield determinants from external resource dependence toward internal capabilities like education. MESR estimates further show that if transitioning to high adoption, low adopters would increase yield by 599.3 kg/ha (10.50%) and medium adopters would increase yield by 288.4 kg/ha (7.55%). Additionally, higher adoption improves yield stability. Under the counterfactual high-adoption scenario, the coefficient of variation (CV) declines from 0.136 to 0.096 for low adopters and from 0.108 to 0.086 for medium adopters, and the interquartile range (IQR) falls from 1140.5 kg/ha to 854.8 kg/ha for low adopters and from 802.1 kg/ha to 631.5 kg/ha for medium adopters, indicating more stable yields at higher adoption. These improvements in maize yield and stability provide evidence for the effectiveness of higher CSA adoption under production constraints, supporting more resource-efficient and resilient maize production under growing climate uncertainty and resource constraints.

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