Assessing the Economic Implications of Climate Change on Agriculture in Punjab in Pakistan: Farmers Perception and Satisfaction

Abstract

Climate factors are pivotal for agriculture productivity and unremittingly climatic change are really harmful for agriculture productivity. Farm level adaptation measures preforms effective role to cope up with climate challenges. This research aims to focus on the farmers’ perception and awareness about climate changes and their vulnerable impacts on agriculture productivity. Additionally, this research also explore the farmer’s satisfaction on adaptation strategies to handle the climate change in Punjab, Pakistan. The 360 respondents were selected to get the questionnaire based data from the farmers located in Punjab province. The survey is conduct through multi-stage, random, and convenient sampling procedure for face to face interviews. For empirical analysis, this research was applied frequency analysis and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) through factor analysis to account the farmers’ perception about climate change and satisfaction on adaptive measures. The results show that younger farmers have more knowledge about climate change and adaptation measures. The empirical results indicates that climate change increases the vulnerability of farmers and reducing the per hectare yield over the time. Variation in temperature, pattern of precipitation, mutable sowing and harvesting time creates alarming situation for agriculture productivity in Punjab, Pakistan. Most of the farmers are not happy with and demanding heat resistant and drought resistant seed varieties. Agriculture extension services are fails to increase the farmer’s perception and satisfaction about climate change. The results show that farmer are not satisfied with performance of climate resilient institutions of Punjab, government laws and regulation, public private partnership (PPP), the efforts of Research Institutions and NGOs, initiatives of international organizations, community level interventions and poor climate resilient funds. It is recommended that government, research institutions and climate resilient instructions should focus on to educate the farmers and predict new sowing and harvesting patterns, water technology, introduce the new climate zones and suitable crops for particular zone.