EDITORIAL: Once again agri sector experts have warned as loudly as they could that climate change is taking such a heavy toll on horticultural and crop yields that if centuries-old ways of seeding and irrigation are not abandoned to make way for technologically advanced methods even now, then very soon we will face “serious food insecurity” and a water crisis we might never recover from.
It turns out that a two-degree rise in hot weather cuts overall agricultural produce by 20pc, which if you’ve not planned for it means last-minute imports at top dollar with no guarantee of securing enough supply in time.
And that, of course, means small farmers will eventually get crushed and big ones will suffer large losses just because there’s no way to make the government wake up, declare an agriculture emergency, and ensure full-scale adoption of modern seeding and irrigation technologies.
Far too many onlookers – this space included – have been crying out for just such measures for far too long, since before climate change was even known to be such a big issue, yet no government regardless of the party in power has ever got this job done.
Agriculture is supposed to be Pakistan’s natural endowment, comparative advantage, largest employer, sector with the most number of Pakistani families associated with it, and of course the country’s bread basket. Yet we’ve fallen from net exporter to chronic importer largely because we still want to run this sector on ancient knowhow and technology even when undeniable effects of climate change have prompted the entire world to improvise.
The World Resources Institute’s research finds Pakistan in a region where agricultural output “could go down to 50pc from 2015 to 2050 because of climate change and the impact on crop yields”. That means changing weather conditions, which in turn are altering rain patterns in both summer and winter, will cause more damage than usual in our part of the world.
Add to that our own selective blindness, biases and resistance to modern technology and it’s not too hard to figure out how and why we’ve dropped from being one of the world’s most water abundant countries, once upon a time, to one of its most water scarce ones now.
It’s a shame that the government has set up research centres and even a climate change ministry, yet experts and stakeholders continue to lament that these institutions have failed to benefit farmers at all. The same old argument that farmers themselves are reluctant to change their habits is simply unacceptable. Why can’t we learn from the Chinese, who kept abreast of climate change complications and employed the latest technologies to stay ahead of the curve and revolutionise their agri sector?
This should be considered the last wakeup call for the government. A collapse of the agri sector, coupled with a water crisis, will unleash economic, social and political crises that could cripple the country. If there’s still no action on this, then our leaders just can’t read the writing on the wall.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024