Climate variability in agriculture and crop water requirement: Spatial analysis of Italian provinces

Water saving in crop production under climate and environmental changing conditions represents a critical issue for agricultural economy and sustainability. This study develops a novel approach to measure the impact of climate variability on crop water requirement at regional level. Firstly, a model where crop water requirement is the dependent variable and some climate variables are the covariates is estimated by using geographically weighted regression to consider different spatial characteristics of the regions. Then, local regression results are integrated to develop two composite indicators able to highlight critical areas in terms of water requirement and to support local policies and practices. The empirical analysis concerns the maize crops production of Italian provinces for 2017. The results point out the existence of great differences between North and South of Italy, where the impact of temperature variability tends to be more severe. The evidences also offer insights for regional planning and economic policies. The proposed methodology is very general and allows for a wider reproducibility for other crops and countries. © 2020 Elsevier Ltd