Impact of water crisis on food production in Pakistan: a time-series analysis

Abstract

The food production process across the developing world is under huge pressure pertaining to mounting challenges like water shortage, low fertility of the land, climatic variations, lack of technological progress, and many other unforeseen challenges. This study explores the impact of water crises on food production. The food production index was used for food production and water crises relationship measured in water availability (million-acre feet). Other explanatory variables, remittances, fertilizer, number of tractors, agricultural land, were used as control factors for the period 1975 to 2017. The autoregressive distributive lag (ARDL) model was used for the analyses. Water crises had significant and negative effects on food production. Besides, that other control factors like, fertilizer, remittances, agricultural land, and numbers of tractors also had a substantial and positive impact. The results indicate a long-run relationship between water crises and food production because the error correction term is significant and negative. Water crises (shortage of water availability) decreases the capacity of the land to produce low crop yields. In order to meet the food demand, water scarcity needed to be addressed in the policies. Moreover, the government should encourage the small farmers in particular by providing them fertilizers, high-efficiency irrigations systems and machinery (i.e. tractors) at subsidized rates.