Open Access

Günter Lang

• Using an exhaustive panel dataset of the German agricultural sector, this paper is evaluating the relationship between climate conditions and land prices. The main advantage of this so-called hedonic approach is the consideration of the full range of adaptation options to the climatic environment. A Box-Cox form is employed to allow for very flexible relationships between land prices, warmth, moisture, and different socioeconomic variables. In a second step, the estimated results are used to forecast the impact of global climate change on the farming sector. The results show that a change of the temperature level has stronger impacts than a change of rainfall. Using a greenhouse warming scenario, German farmers are expected to be winners of climate change at least in the short run. Maximum gains are estimated with a temperature increase of +1.0°C against the current levels. Should the temperature increase surpass 1.8°C, however, the impact on the farming sector is clearly negative.