Food security under climatic perturbation: insight from Punjab, Pakistan

Food is one of the basic necessities and inevitable for humans’ survival. Provision of food to everyone is one of the basic agendas of The United Nations (UN). The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is working in almost all over the world and trying to make the nations “hunger free” with special focus on developing countries. Pakistan is also struggling to achieve the “Zero Hunger Goal” and several initiatives have been taken in the past and are continued by the sitting government. Climatic changings have posed serious threat to food security in recent years. Rise in temperature, flood, drought and water scarcity are some of the major challenges and threats to food security. The present study is conducted to investigate the impact of climate change on food crop (wheat). Both primary and secondary data is used to analyze the results. The district of Punjab which is producing wheat crop at large is selected and then data is collected for wheat production and other variables. Production of wheat crop is taken as an independent variable while water availability, temperature and rainfall anomalies are taken as an independent variables. Multiple Linear Regression Model (MLRM) is used to interpret the result. The results show that water availability has positive impact on food production while rise in temperature has negative impact. Co-efficient of rainfall showed that it has positive but weaker impact. Study is helpful for economists, scholars, government officials and policy makers who are in unremitting scuffle to achieve the zero hunger goal.