Department of Agricultural Economics, Ondokuz Mayıs University, 55139, Samsun, Turkey.
Department of Economics and Business Administration, Division of Management and Administrative Sciences, University of Education, Lahore, Pakistan.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2022 Mar;29(12):16925-16938. doi: 10.1007/s11356-021-16844-5. Epub 2021 Oct 16.
Climate change is a serious threat to global agriculture and the farming community is well aware of this challenge. This is the first empirical study that looks beyond the traditional studies only limited to the adoption of climate change measures by estimating the impact of adopted practices on technical efficiency and computing the actual level of fertilizer at the farm level. For this purpose, face-to-face interviews were conducted for data collection with 196 farmers selected through multiple stage simple random sampling in the wheat-maize mix cropping zone of Punjab province. The results depicted that changing fertilizer was the most commonly adopted strategy (76%) to negate the effects of climate changes on crop production. Stochastic frontier analysis results revealed that the adoption of diversification practices, soil and water conservation practices, and modern input use strategies were influential factors explaining the technical efficiency differential among different farmers. The average technical efficiency score was 0.71 in the locality implying that farmers have an opportunity to increase their farm efficiency by 29% with the present level of inputs. Moreover, adopters of modern input practices with a high index were 27% more efficient than those with a low adaptation index of these climate countering measures. The empirical results also revealed the excessive use of nitrogen fertilizer to counter the climate change impacts at the agricultural farms. This result has important policy implications for government agencies that it is not enough just to guide and motivate the farmers to adopt certain strategies to negate the effect of climate change. They should also be informed about the exact usage level of those suggested measures.
气候变化对全球农业构成严重威胁，农业界深知这一挑战。这是第一项超越传统研究的实证研究，不仅限于估计采用气候变化措施对技术效率的影响，而且还计算了农场层面肥料的实际使用水平。为此，通过多阶段简单随机抽样，在旁遮普省小麦-玉米混作区选择了 196 名农民进行了实地访谈以收集数据。结果表明，改变肥料是抵消气候变化对作物生产影响的最常用策略（76％）。随机前沿分析结果表明，采用多样化策略、水土保持实践和现代投入使用策略是解释不同农民技术效率差异的因素。该地区的平均技术效率得分为 0.71，这意味着农民在目前的投入水平上有机会提高 29％的农场效率。此外，采用现代投入实践且指数较高的农民比采用这些应对气候变化措施的适应指数较低的农民的效率高 27％。实证结果还揭示了农业领域过度使用氮肥来应对气候变化的影响。这些结果对政府机构具有重要的政策意义，仅仅指导和激励农民采用某些策略来抵消气候变化的影响是不够的。他们还应了解建议措施的实际使用水平。
