Driving cereal production under climate change: unlocking the role of ICT, agricultural credit access, and fertilizer consumption-control in top 10 global cereal producing countries

This paper examines the impact of climate change (TC), information communication and technology (ICT), agricultural credit (AC), and fertilizer consumption (FC) on the cereal production (CP) in top 10 cereal producing countries for the period 2002–2022. Using Driscoll-Kraay standard errors and Method of Moments Quantile Regression, the findings reveal a significant positive impact of ICT, AC, and FC on cereal production, while climate change has significant negative effects on cereal production. Empirically, our study is the first to investigate the interaction impact of information communication and technology with agricultural credit, and fertilizer consumption with agricultural credit. The estimated findings indicate that access to agricultural credit helps farmers for the deployment of ICT tools and improves the timely and adequate use of fertilizer which helps in boosting the cereal production. Underscoring these findings, the government must focus on improving the digital infrastructure, expand affordable agricultural credit and promote efficient fertilizer consumption to enhance the cereal production. Thus, this helps rural and small farmers to enable to adopt ICT tools, access greater agricultural markets, timely purchase and efficient use of fertilizers which foster cereal production and support efforts toward achieving SDG 2.4.