Drought assessment of Pakistan and its impact on its agricultural production
Growing population and climate changes have raised concerns for the food security. There is a growing interest in studying climatic variables which include precipitation & temperature and their impacts on the crop yield. Crop production with comparison to yield is a more suitable and realistic variable for such an analysis because drought impacts both the crop yield and harvesting area. Agriculture is an important sector of Pakistan’s economy, so country is dependent on crop production for not only ensuring its food security but also economic prosperity, which is manifested by the fact that the share of this sector in its GDP is 24% (Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, 2019). This study focuses on impact of drought on the crop production at the sub-national level of Pakistan. Drought is defined by precipitation deficit in term of Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the chosen time scale of index for this study is 6 months to cover an entire crop season. Impact of drought is studied at the seasonal level and individual crop level using a statistical model which includes the impact of SPI as a variable. Results from the analysis show that a strong correlation exists between the drought and Rabi crop production for Balochistan and KPK provinces, which have limited natural resources; whereas no such correlation exists for the provinces of Punjab and Sindh, since there is already an abundant presence of various natural resources in the form of extensive irrigation network, ground water and fertile plains with suitable temperature. This relationship between the drought and its impact on the wheat production is positive in those provinces. The major crops of the Kharif season are rice, cotton, sugar cane and maize. The modeling analysis does not show any correlation between the drought and their respective production as these crops are mainly sown on rainfed crop land, while a small fraction of maize is sown both on rainfed and irrigated cropland. The Kharif season has comparatively fewer dry periods than the Rabi season because of the Monsoon, and thus the crops in the Kharif season are less vulnerable to the droughts ranging from mild to moderate than the Rabi season crops.
Drought, Pakistan, SPI, Rabi, Kharif, Crop production
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign