Adaptation strategies to climate change and their impact on agricultural production in Punjab, Pakistan

Climate change (increase temperature and erratic rainfall patterns) has brought about possibly permanent alterations to our planet's ecological, biological and geological systems. One way to handle climatic variations is the adaptation to climate change. Studies have found that adverse impacts of climatic adversaries can easily be muted by adaptation to climate change. But, how effective adaptation strategies in response to climate change vulnerabilities are is a crucial question confronting farmers across the world especially in developing countries. Whereas literature has found the effectiveness of adaptation strategies based on perceptions of farmers but one cannot generalize this method as the perceptions vary from region to region and even from person to person. This study ranked the adaptation techniques based on actual efficiency of each adoption measure. There are different socio economic, demographic and institutional factors that affect farmers’ awareness of and adaptation strategies to climate change that further need to be explored. The study in hand found these determinants in Pakistan’s context. Multi stage purposively random sampling technique was used for data collection. At first we selected Punjab as for overall study. Second stage, the study selected purposively Central Punjab (Mixed cropping zone-Faisalabad and Sheikhupura districts) and Southern Punjab (Cotton Zone- Multan) of Province Punjab in Pakistan. At third stage four Tehsil were selected randomly (two from each zone). At fourth stage the study selected four Union Councils selected randomly from each district. At fifth stage two villages were selected from each union council randomly. At sixth and last stage 7 farmers were randomly chosen. Hence, our total sample size was 224 and data was collected during July 2016 to August 2016. For analysis the study used Binary Logistic Model for factors affecting awareness of and adaptation strategies to climate change whereas two stage least square is used to capture the impact of adaptation strategies on yield of wheat crop. Further, adapters and non-adapters to climate change were separated for each farm level strategy. Data Envelopment Analysis was applied to each adapter of strategy and non-adapters to calculate their efficiencies. Using action theory we delineated three stages of adaptation and found that 71.4% of farmers perceived CC where 58.5% farmers planned to adapt while 40.2% actually adapted. It was found that farmers were aware to climate change where education, experience, farm assets and institutional services and farmers’ linkages have significant positive influence on it. The farmers adopted to climatic vagaries through change crop variety (56.3%), change crop type (38.8%), change planting date (44.6%), plant shaded trees (37.5%), increase/change fertilizer (17.9%), soil conservation (38.4%), increase irrigation (39.7%) and diversification (49.2%). It was also found that awareness, education, landholding, access to credit and farm tools has positive significant effect on the majority of adaptation strategies while distance to output markets has significant negative impact. Factors from high rank theory such as membership of farm organization, contact with middle man, farmer-to-farmer extension and contact with extension service agent also contribute to the adaptation to climate change. Membership of farm organization has positive and significant relationship with adaptation to climate change though change crop variety and change planting dates. Similarly, contact with middlemen help farmers to keep abreast from awareness about climate change. The contact with middlemen has positive and significance association with awareness about climate change and hence indirectly contributes to the adaptation to climate change. However, farmer-to-farmers extension found negatively significant relationship with change/increase fertilizer and diversification suggesting farmers ties should be strengthen more. Similarly, contact with extension services provider has negative and significant association with change crop variety. This is common in developing countries where extension agents have old traditional knowledge while adoption measures through new knowledge changes with climate changes. Further it was found that most of adapters are technically more efficient than non-adapters with diversification most and soil conservation least productive. Adaptation strategies such as change crop variety, change crop type and change planting dates have positive and significant impact on yield of wheat crop. Hence, adaptations can increase the food products. However, adaptation process is slow due to some constraints such as lack of resources and information about climate change. The study recommends that government should create awareness through information system to gear-up the adaptation process and build farmers’ adaptive capacity with monetary incentives. The study also recommends that training need analysis should be done for updating the extension agents’ knowledge about agricultural practices. Access on marketing of produce has positive relationship with all the adaptation strategies while significant associations with majority of these strategies. Therefore, the study recommends that the government should provide the access of farmers to marketing of produce. There some limitations in the current study. For instance, study only found the efficiencies of adapters and non-adapters however future research requires to see the benefit cost analysis of each adoption measure. The study compare the efficiency of diversification through mango-wheat intercropping and wheat monoculture but future research requires to compare the efficiencies of mango monoculture, wheat monoculture and mango-wheat intercropping.

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