Harvested Area, Climate Variability, and Cereal Production Dynamics in Algeria: Var Evidence, 1990–2024

Algeria’s cereal sector is strongly exposed to rainfed conditions, while harvested area represents an important production margin linking land use to realised output. Using annual data for 1990–2024, this study examines dynamic relationships among cereal production, harvested area, precipitation, and surface-air temperature. A parsimonious four-variable VAR(1) is estimated with low- and high-precipitation anomaly indicators as deterministic controls. Impulse-response uncertainty is assessed using 95% percentile-bootstrap confidence intervals based on 2,000 repetitions, while Zivot–Andrews and Quandt–Andrews procedures examine stationarity allowing for one endogenous structural break and parameter stability, respectively. The benchmark joint block-exogeneity test is significant (p = 0.0345), but not in the trend-augmented specification (p = 0.6883), which is treated as more conservative, given the trend-dependent conventional stationarity evidence for LTEMP. At horizon 10, production’s own innovations account for 78.47% of forecast-error variance, while harvested area has the largest non-own point estimate (12.85%); this share remains identification-dependent and non-causal. Parameter instability is detected only in the harvested-area equation. Production persistence is the most stable dynamic pattern, while evidence on harvested area and climate variables remains model-conditional and specification-sensitive. For policy, the findings motivate attention to harvested-area continuity and seasonal climate monitoring without establishing the effects of specific interventions.