Factors other than climate change are currently more important in predicting how well fruit farms are doing financially

Abstract

Abstract Supervised machine learning and statistical modeling methods were used to analyze the impact of climate change on financial wellbeing of fruit farmers in Tunisia and Chile. The analysis was based on face to face interviews with 801 farmers. This is the first report directly comparing climate change hazards with other factors potentially impacting financial wellbeing of (fruit) farms. Certain climate change factors, namely increases in temperature and reductions in precipitation, can regionally impact self-perceived financial wellbeing of fruit farmers. Specifically, increases in temperature and reduction in precipitation can have a measurable negative impact on the financial wellbeing of farms in Chile. This effect is less pronounced in Tunisia. However, climate change is only of minor importance for predicting farm financial wellbeing, especially for farms already doing financially well. Factors that are more important, mainly in Tunisia, included trust in information sources and prior farm ownership. Other important factors include farm size, water management systems used and diversity of fruit crops grown. Moreover, some of the important factors identified differed between farms doing and not doing well financially. Interactions between factors may improve or worsen farm financial wellbeing.