Agriculture: Food security through climate-smart agriculture

Climate change manifests itself through rising temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, and increasing intensity and frequency of extreme weather events. It has enhanced the production risk of agricultural farming, a business which has already been inherently risky for farmers due to high dependency on favourable weather conditions and volatile prices of crops in the market. Even if we put aside the megaflood of 2022, Pakistan’s farmers already feel the full brunt of climate change. For instance, the extraordinary heat wave in March 2022 reduced wheat yield significantly because grains could not reach their full size due to early higher temperatures in the range of 40–42 Celsius. Likewise, this heat wave also impacted the flowering of mango trees, which in turn decreased mango production in 2022. Negative effects of climate change can be seen in 2023 as well, where severe frost in January has adversely affected the potato crop in Punjab’s major potato-growing districts. As a consequence of such production decrease, Pakistan’s current food security situation is worsening, and it is likely to be aggravated further in the future. To decrease the adverse effects of climate change on agriculture, international development agencies are pursuing an integrated approach called climate-smart agriculture (CSA), which is primarily comprised of three components; increasing agricultural productivity, building resilience to climate change (adaptation), and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which cause climate change (mitigation).