A major new scientific resource has been produced with the support of the Giannini Foundation of Agricultural Economics. Edited by Profs Ariel Dinar and Robert Mendelsohn, The Handbook on Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation, and Mitigation in Agriculture (Edward Elgar Publishing, May 2026) integrates evidence from empirical studies across five continents, providing one of the clearest pictures to-date of how climate change is influencing agriculture.
The studies range from large-scale econometric analyses to micro-level surveys, covering Africa, Europe, the United States, Brazil, China, and Mediterranean countries. The result is a body of work revealing scientifically rigorous patterns that are highly relevant for policy and practice. The foreword from Wolf Prize Laureate David Zilberman highlights how the Handbook’s findings are thematically organized into climate impacts, adaptation, mitigation, and governance.

Do you find data analysis dense and impenetrable, like a quantitative jungle? You’re not alone. Many of the most useful statistical tools have steep-learning curves and often demand both sophisticated mathematical ability and advanced programming skills. But, in a world where data is constantly generated and recorded, it’s essential that data analysis tools are as accessible as possible. And there’s no reason they can’t be; with such powerful digital tools at our disposal, data visualisation can be made as straightforward as the click of a button.

That’s the goal behind Professor David Gerbing’s latest project – lessR. lessR is a free, open-source package for one of the most popular analysis programming languages, R, designed to make data visualisation as simple as possible. See Professor Gerbing’s written and video introduction to using the R language for data analysis at the website he provides for his students.

Amid growing pressures from climate change and population growth, water availability in the Colorado River Basin is declining while demand continues to rise. At the Water Dialogue Lab at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), Prof Mehdi Nemati and his colleagues, Dr Daniel Crespo, Prof Ariel Dinar, and Ms Paloma Avila from UCR’s School of Public Policy, along with Mr Zachary Frankel and Mr Nicholas Halberg from the Utah Rivers Council, have developed integrated models to assess changes in water availability, use, and associated economic values across the Basin. Their research evaluates the effects of climate change and policy interventions on both physical water supply and economic outcomes. Their findings highlight the need for adaptive planning, improved economic resilience, and policy reforms to ensure long-term sustainability in the region.

Today’s demand planning landscape is increasingly defined by radical uncertainty. Professor Yves R. Sagaert from the research group Predictive AI and Digital Shift at VIVES University of Applied Sciences is one of many scholars who posits that to survive and thrive in this new normal, demand planners must consider incorporating leading macroeconomic indicators into their demand forecasts. This field of research is vital for better understanding how the early warning signals in leading macroeconomic indicators can be used to inform precision forecasting and minimise forecast-reality variance.