Factor productivity impacts of climate change and estimating the technical efficiency of cereal crop yields: Evidence from sub-Saharan African countries

The world aims to ensure environmental sustainability and consolidate agricultural factor productivity, yet the excruciating impact of climate change coincides and remains a persistent threat. Therefore, the study aims to estimate the technical efficiency of cereal crop yields and investigate the impacts of climate change on agricultural factor productivity. For this purpose, panel data from 35 sub-Saharan African countries between 2005 and 2020 was employed. For analysis, the pooled OLS and stochastic frontier models were employed. The results revealed that in the region, the average efficiency score for producing cereal crops between 2005 and 2020 was 83%. The stochastic frontier model results showed that labour contributed 51.5% and fertilizer contributed 5.7% to raising the technical efficiency of cereal crop yields, whereas arable land per hectare reduced the technical efficiency of cereal yields by 44.7%. The pooled OLS regression result showed that climate change proxies (CO2 and methane emissions) diminish land, labour, and fertilizers productivity at a 1% significance level, whereas GDP per capita boosts significantly the total factor productivity in agriculture. This confirmed how climate change reduced land, labour, and fertilizer input productivity. The results concluded that the region had a high level of technical efficiency; of which labour and fertilizer inputs contributed the largest share; however, their productivity has dwindled due to climate change. To increase cereal crop yield efficiency and limit the adverse effects of climate change on agricultural input productivity, the region should combine skilled and trained labour and fertilizer with sophisticated agriculture technologies, as well as adopt climate resistance technologies (weather- resistant variety seed and planting revolution mechanisms).