Coping or adapting? The counterintuitive role of financial access in agricultural resilience under climate stress: evidence from Türkiye

Abstract

This study investigates the resilience of the agricultural sector in T & uuml;rkiye to climate shocks at the provincial level during 2005-2024 by examining the spatial structure and the determinants of resilience within a spatial econometric framework. In the study, a new index, namely the Provincial Agricultural Resilience Index (PARI), comprising the productivity, stability, and diversity sub-indices, was constructed; the trends, spatial patterns, and relationships between the index and climatic as well as structural factors were examined. The results indicate that although the average agricultural resilience of T & uuml;rkiye has recorded a marginal increase, the improvement is not spatially uniform and is accompanied by a pronounced regional divergence pattern. During 2005-2024, PARI levels displayed significant and increasingly stronger spatial clustering; higher resilience levels were concentrated in the Western and Mediterranean basins, whereas lower resilience levels were concentrated in Eastern and Northeastern Anatolia, pointing to an inter-provincial sigma-divergence. The results of the Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) reveal that agricultural resilience has a strong spatial dependence; the impacts of climate shocks transcend provincial boundaries and have spillover effects on neighboring provinces. The negative and statistically significant direct and total effects of the drought indicator indicate that climate shocks are likely to undermine agricultural resilience. However, the negative direct and indirect effects of agricultural credit and mechanization variables imply that financial access and capital use can serve mainly as short-term coping mechanisms rather than investment channels enhancing agricultural resilience against climate shocks. The results of marginal-effects analysis imply that the use of credit may even exacerbate rather than compensate for the loss of resilience, particularly in the case of drought, implying that the existing financial instruments may be insufficient to support long-term structural adaptation capacity. Overall, the results suggest that financial policies for a climate-resilient agricultural system should be redesigned by incorporating productive technology investments and regional adaptation differentials.