Agricultural input shocks affect crop yields more in the high-yielding areas of the world
The industrialization of agriculture has led to an increasing dependence on non-locally sourced agricultural inputs. Hence, shocks in the availability of agricultural inputs can be devastating to food crop production. There is also a pressure to decrease the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides in many areas. However, the combined impact of the agricultural input shocks on crop yields has not yet been systematically assessed globally. Here we modelled the effects of agricultural input shocks using a random forest machine learning algorithm. We show that shocks in fertilizers cause the m...
Source: nature.com