On the morning of April 20, 2023, the third lecture of the Agricultural Economics Forum and the "New Path for Agricultural and Forestry Economics and Management Disciplines" series was held in Room 931 of the Mingde Main Building. Attending and delivering the lecture titled “Economic Research on Agriculture's Response to Climate Change” was Dr. Xie Wei, a researcher at the Modern Agricultural College of Peking University and Deputy Director of the China Agricultural Policy Research Center. The lecture was hosted by Professor Chen Minpeng and attended by over 50 faculty members and students from within and outside the university, including Professor Qiu Huanguang, Professor Tan Shuhao, Associate Professor Yang Sansi, Associate Professor Tang Jianjun, Associate Professor Chen Wei, Associate Professor Wang Yumeng, and Associate Professor Zhuang Minghao from China Agricultural University, with an additional 20+ participants joining online.

Dr. Xie Wei's lecture focused on two main areas: optimizing agricultural production layout and addressing the impacts of climate change on agriculture and downstream industries. He reviewed the evolution of China's agricultural production layout over the past 40 years, highlighting significant achievements in food security and identifying areas of insufficiency in resource conservation and environmental protection. Drawing on his research findings, Dr. Xie shared insights on using large-scale linear optimization models for multi-objective optimization to achieve the synergistic goals of resource conservation, environmental improvement, and increased farmer income, thereby identifying directions for optimizing agricultural production layout. Through detailed data analysis, he emphasized the crucial role of optimizing agricultural productivity layout in achieving targets such as the water usage red line, blue water, green water, zero growth in fertilizer and pesticide use, and agricultural carbon neutrality.

Dr. Xie employed a coupled assessment approach combining climate models, crop models, and economic models to explore the impact of climate change on the global barley and beer markets. He predicted that extreme climate conditions by the end of the century could lead to a twofold increase in global beer prices and a 16% reduction in supply. This innovative research, starting with a commodity popular with the general public, helps raise awareness about the broader impacts of climate change.