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The geographical range of agricultural crops is shifting because of climate change. Reducing the potential negative impact of this shift requires efficient crop switching at farm level. Yet there are scant studies that examine how crop switching is currently taking place and what factors facilitate the process. Even these few existing studies often based their analysis on inadequately established causal link between climate change and switching decisions. This study aims to identify the specific switching decisions that are primarily motivated by climate change, and their determinants.

The study used a household survey on 190 households in Semien Shewa Zone in Ethiopia. Subjective rating of farmers was used to identify the relative importance of climate change in motivating the different types of switching decisions. A logit model is used to identify determinants of crop switching decisions primarily motivated by climate change.

Farmers in the study area are currently abandoning certain crops as a response to climate change. The adoption of new crops is, however, mainly attributed to price changes. Most farmers who abandoned at least one crop adopted mung bean mainly due to its price advantages. As expected, crop switching as an adaptation strategy is more prevalent particularly in drier and hotter agroecologies. The logit model showed that crop switching is strongly correlated with land size and agroecology.

This paper provides an in-depth examination of crop switching as an adaptation strategy to climate change. Crop switching is an adaptation strategy that is expected to substantially reduce the damage from climate change in agriculture. The findings are particularly relevant for adaptation planning in the context of smallholder agriculture.

As the US-China conflict intensifies, the United States is pursuing a ‘decoupling’ strategy to build a new world trade order, arguing that the current World Trade Organization (WTO) system does not properly regulate China's non-market economic system. The WTO provides special and differentiated treatment (S&DT) for developing countries. The United States argues that China should give up its developing country (DC) status. Sufficient research on the DC status and S&DT has not been conducted as a means of resolving the US-China conflict. Decoupling means the collapse of the global supply chain (GSC), which will bring substantial shock to the global economy and a catastrophe for China. This paper examines the re-classification of DC status and S&DT in the context of US-China conflict and seeks an approach for China to avoid decoupling and coexist with the United States. It would be an optimal way for China to revive the WTO first and to improve its economic system through negotiations under the WTO.

The purpose of this paper is to measure Farmer’s adoption tendency towards drought shock, risk-taking networks and modern irrigation technology.

Based on this assumption, this paper evaluated the data gathered from 498 household surveys of Zhangye, Gansu province, PRC, by using the binary probit model. First, the empirical data was analyzed for evaluating the impact of drought shock and risk-taking tendencies on the adoption of modern irrigation technology by farmers. Second, the authors introduced informal risk-bearing networks with formal risks. Final, based on the empirical results, the sustainability test, along with the marginal effect analysis and the degree of impact was carried out.

The results show that the drought shock has a significantly deferent effect on the modern irrigation technology of the farmers. The probability of using technology for each level of drought loss is reduced by 15.02%. The risk-taking network has a significant role in promoting the modern irrigation technology of farmers. The probability of adoption for each additional unit of rural household labor security supply, the likelihood of adoption by farmers increased 23.11%, the probability of approval for each level of relative support, and neighborhood assistance by farmers increased by 13.11% and 17.88% respectively. This study further revealed that insurance purchases enabled farmers to adopt new irrigation technology with the probability increased by 24.99%; easily available bank loans increased the probability of farmers using irrigation technology by 31.89%. From the perspective of interactions between farmers, the risk-taking network can alleviate the inhibitory effect of drought impact towards the adoption of irrigation technology. Among the control variables, the number of years of education, the age of farming, the degree of arable land, the distance from home to the market, and the price of water all has significant effects on the adoption of modern irrigation technology by farmers.

The novelty of the study is that it illustrated the interactive influence of drought shock and risk-taking networks on the farmer’s adoption tendencies of modern irrigation technologies, the inner relationship among drought impact, the risk-taking network and the farmer’s adoption behavior and provide an interactive relationship between the formal risk-taking network and the non-risk-taking network in farmer’s technology adoption.