Role of Agriculture Extension in Ensuring Food Security in the Context of Climate Change: State of the Art and Prospects for Reforms in Pakistan

Abstract

Pakistan is predominantly an agrarian economy with a cropped area of 22 million ha, the largest integrated irrigation system of the Indus Basin, and a 19% share of agriculture in GDP. The agricultural economy is generating employment for 45% of total population and more than 60% directly or indirectly relying on it for livelihoods. This sector has been growing well above the population growth rate. Pakistan has made significant progress in food production over the last several decades. However, the agriculture sector has been facing a number of challenges, resulting in a performance less than its potential, with a growth rate of 3.3% over the last decade. The major factors include a slow rate of technological innovation and inadequate extension services and technology transfer. Due to this low performance, the country is a net importer of agricultural products despite being one of the world’s large growers of wheat, rice, cotton, fruits, livestock, and livestock products. Subsequently, food security has remained a key challenge due to high population growth, rapid urbanization, low purchasing power, high price fluctuations, erratic food production, and inefficient food distribution systems. According to available figures, 18% of the population is undernourished with child wasting and stunting. Furthermore, climate change projections indicate that there will be more frequent extreme events such as floods and droughts. The agriculture sector will primarily be severely impacted by such changes, thus threatening food security. Hence the importance of coping strategies, including revamping of agricultural extension services given their pivotal role in ensuring food security. Extension services need capacity building to deal with the emerging challenges in agriculture. Sharing of agricultural knowledge and good practices in extension and advisory provision can go a long way in strengthening these capacities and enhancing productivity and rural incomes. The government, therefore, has considered starting mega projects with massive investment for agricultural production enhancement through reviving and upgrading the existing agricultural extension and adaptive research to meet the challenges of national food security.