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Sustainability and efficiency analysis w.r.t adoption of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) in Pakistan: a group-wise comparison of adopters and conventional farmers

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Abstract

Climate change, conventional agricultural management practices, and increasing water scarcity pose a major threat to agricultural production and biodiversity as well as environmental sustainability. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is recognized as an efficient, sustainable, and feasible agricultural system that plays a vital role in addressing the potential impacts of climate change in Pakistan. First-hand information was collected from 450 farm households in 24 villages from Okara, Sahiwal, and Khanewal irrigation divisions, having various wheat-based cropping systems of Pakistan. This includes rice–wheat (RW), maize-wheat (MW), and cotton-wheat (CW) cropping systems in the Lower Bari Doab Canal (LBDC) irrigation system. This study estimated and compared the sustainability and efficiency analysis of CSA and conventional agricultural practices. This study also estimated the impact of water-smart practices of the CSA, technical training, and groundwater quality on agricultural production by using production function and bootstrap truncated regression. The findings of this study revealed that adopters of CSA of the wheat-based cropping systems have higher economic benefits and improved resource use efficiencies compared to the conventional farmers. The findings of the study also revealed the increased efficiency of CSA adopters over other two systems in CW cropping system. The water-smart practices of CSA, access to credit, technical training, use of groundwater of varying quality, and other inputs also showed variations in the agricultural production and resource use efficiency. It has been concluded that farmers can earn more profit, save inputs (such as water), and increase their production by adopting water-smart practices of CSA. Hence, the government and other relevant institutions should devise and implement policies that adequately addressed the importance and enhance the use of water-smart practices of CSA in Punjab and beyond.

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Data and materials availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes

  1. The technical efficiency is estimated by using the physical quantities of output and input while economic efficiency is estimated by using both physical quantities and prices of output and input. Therefore, it may be possible that there is no difference in the differential of technical and economic efficiency (Watto and Mugera 2014). Due to this reason, economic efficiency is not involved in the “Explaining resource use efficiency differential” section.

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Acknowledgements

The first author acknowledged the support for this research work provided by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan, through a Ph.D. indigenous scholarship granted to him.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan

    Muhammad Ali Imran, Asghar Ali & Muhammad Ashfaq

  2. Department of Agribusiness and Applied Economics, MNS-University of Agriculture, Multan, Pakistan

    Muhammad Ali Imran, Irfan Ahmad Baig & Shoaib Nasir

  3. School of Agricultural and Wine Sciences, Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, Australia

    Richard J. Culas

  4. Director ORIC, Virtual University, Lahore, Pakistan

    Arshad Hussain Hashmi

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  1. Muhammad Ali Imran
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Contributions

The research was designed, performed, and analyzed by M.A.I. who also prepared the first draft with valuable input from A.A.; M.A.; R.J.C.; A.H.H; and I.A.B; S. N. revised and rewrote the article with substantial input. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Muhammad Ali Imran.

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Table 7

Table 7 Frequency distribution of the farmers of wheat-based cropping systems (percent of farmers of each category)
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Imran, M.A., Ali, A., Culas, R.J. et al. Sustainability and efficiency analysis w.r.t adoption of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) in Pakistan: a group-wise comparison of adopters and conventional farmers. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 19337–19351 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-17181-3

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