Climate Change, Risk and Food Security:
An Analysis of Wheat Crop in Pakistan
Muhammad Haroon Abdullah, Abdul Saboor, Irfan Ahmad Baig
and Muhammad Arshad
Abstract Climate change is a growing threat for humanity, while agriculture is one
of the most vulnerable sectors to this impending change. This study analyses the
risk associated with wheat crop (staple food) due to climatic factors and its possible
impacts on food security in Pakistan. As climate changes, it effects crop productivity and has heterogeneous impacts with respect to geographical locations. This
concern led us to select geographical classification of wheat farming in Pakistan. To
capture risk factor for wheat production, we employed Just and Pope (1978) production function using district-level disintegrated data of area, fertilizer, yield and
climatic variables (temperature and precipitation) for wheat over the period of
1984–2013. We used 20 years moving averages of monthly mean temperature and
precipitation and further classified them according to the growth stages of wheat.
We estimated the weather shocks and combine effect of climatic variables by
variation and interaction terms, respectively. Further, we translated the impacts of
vulnerability of wheat grain on per-capita availability to depict the national food
security level. Our empirical findings showed that impact of variation in temperature during growing stage is highly significant and contributes in lowering the
wheat yield risk, while increase in precipitation during growing and flowering
stages poses high risk to wheat crop. Interaction terms of climatic variables showed
non-significant risk-decreasing effect during all the three growth stages of the
crop. Further, we found that average per-capita wheat grain availability is 135 kg in
Pakistan, significantly higher than self-sufficiency level but highly vulnerable. Our
findings suggest that there is a need to develop robust adaptation strategies to
combat the risk phenomenon and to sustain and improve wheat grain production for
the masses in future. Specifically, developing climate resistant cultivars and
M.H. Abdullah Á A. Saboor Á I.A. Baig
Department of Economics and Agricultural Economics,
PMAS-Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan
M. Arshad (&)
Institute of Socio-Economics, Leibniz Center for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF),
Müncheberg, Germany
e-mail: Muhammad.Arshad@zalf.de; Arshad.Muhammad125@gmail.com
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
S. Nautiyal et al. (eds.), Climate Change Challenge (3C)
and Social-Economic-Ecological Interface-Building, Environmental Science,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31014-5_4
41
An Analysis of Wheat Crop in Pakistan
Muhammad Haroon Abdullah, Abdul Saboor, Irfan Ahmad Baig
and Muhammad Arshad
Abstract Climate change is a growing threat for humanity, while agriculture is one
of the most vulnerable sectors to this impending change. This study analyses the
risk associated with wheat crop (staple food) due to climatic factors and its possible
impacts on food security in Pakistan. As climate changes, it effects crop productivity and has heterogeneous impacts with respect to geographical locations. This
concern led us to select geographical classification of wheat farming in Pakistan. To
capture risk factor for wheat production, we employed Just and Pope (1978) production function using district-level disintegrated data of area, fertilizer, yield and
climatic variables (temperature and precipitation) for wheat over the period of
1984–2013. We used 20 years moving averages of monthly mean temperature and
precipitation and further classified them according to the growth stages of wheat.
We estimated the weather shocks and combine effect of climatic variables by
variation and interaction terms, respectively. Further, we translated the impacts of
vulnerability of wheat grain on per-capita availability to depict the national food
security level. Our empirical findings showed that impact of variation in temperature during growing stage is highly significant and contributes in lowering the
wheat yield risk, while increase in precipitation during growing and flowering
stages poses high risk to wheat crop. Interaction terms of climatic variables showed
non-significant risk-decreasing effect during all the three growth stages of the
crop. Further, we found that average per-capita wheat grain availability is 135 kg in
Pakistan, significantly higher than self-sufficiency level but highly vulnerable. Our
findings suggest that there is a need to develop robust adaptation strategies to
combat the risk phenomenon and to sustain and improve wheat grain production for
the masses in future. Specifically, developing climate resistant cultivars and
M.H. Abdullah Á A. Saboor Á I.A. Baig
Department of Economics and Agricultural Economics,
PMAS-Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan
M. Arshad (&)
Institute of Socio-Economics, Leibniz Center for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF),
Müncheberg, Germany
e-mail: Muhammad.Arshad@zalf.de; Arshad.Muhammad125@gmail.com
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
S. Nautiyal et al. (eds.), Climate Change Challenge (3C)
and Social-Economic-Ecological Interface-Building, Environmental Science,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-31014-5_4
41