Rainfall Variability and its Impact on Dryland Cropping in Victoria

Conventional wisdom holds that rainfall variability represents a significant source of agriculture production risk. Surprisingly, there have been very few economic analyses exploring the link between rainfall variability and agriculture production. This paper is intended to investigate the factual basis of this assumption and to inform future government policy in such areas as drought, climate change adaptation and water policy. We investigate whether rainfall variability has had an actual impact on agricultural production, specifically dryland cropping in Victorian regions during the period 1982-83 to 2004-05.