Linking climate change adaptation practices with farm technical efficiency and fertilizer use: a study of wheat–maize mix cropping zone of Punjab province, Pakistan

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.