Climate Stress Puts Pakistan’s Crops, Rural Economy and Food Security at Risk

Increasing climate stress is becoming an economic as well as an agricultural challenge for Pakistan, threatening crop productivity, farmer incomes and future food security as the sector confronts water scarcity, deteriorating soil health and increasingly unpredictable production conditions.

Speaking at the Pakistan Agriculture Coalition’s Agri-Connections 2026 conference in Lahore, Zeeshan Baig, Country General Manager, Syngenta Pakistan, said Pakistan needed to build a more resilient agricultural system as farmers increasingly faced pressures that directly affected their ability to produce food consistently and profitably.

The challenge assumes wider economic significance because agriculture accounts for 23.44 percent of Pakistan’s GDP. Although the sector grew by 2.89 percent during FY2025-26, important crops recorded growth of only 0.65 percent, with increases in sugarcane, wheat and rice offset by declines in cotton and maize, according to the Pakistan Economic Survey 2025-26.

Baig said climate-related disruptions were compounding existing pressures on agriculture, particularly declining water availability, weakening soil health and changing pest and disease patterns.

“We don’t just need more food, we need more sustainable and resilient food,” he said, arguing that Pakistan could no longer look at agricultural productivity independently of the environmental and resource constraints affecting farmers.

Water represents one of the most significant vulnerabilities. Pakistan’s agricultural system remains heavily dependent on irrigation, making farm productivity increasingly exposed to declining water availability and changing climatic conditions.

Zeeshan said that as resources become more constrained, the challenge would be to enable agriculture to produce more while improving the efficiency with which water, land and other inputs were used.

The implications extend beyond individual farms. Punjab alone accounts for around 73 percent of Pakistan’s total food production, making the resilience of agriculture in the province particularly important for national food supplies as well as the livelihoods and economic activity supported by the rural economy.

The World Bank has similarly identified improving agricultural water productivity, climate resilience and farmer incomes in Punjab as important to strengthening the country’s agricultural system.

The pressure is expected to intensify as Pakistan’s population continues to grow while agricultural resources remain constrained. “By the next 30 years, our population is expected to increase by almost 50 percent. Today, we are already at a weak deficit or marginally meeting the food demand of the local economy,” said Zeeshan. He further said, the combination of rising food demand and increasing climate pressure meant Pakistan would need to protect agricultural productivity against both sudden shocks and longer-term stresses.

Climate resilience, he added, therefore needed to become part of everyday agricultural decision-making, including how farmers use water, manage soil health, protect crops against emerging pests and diseases, and respond to changing weather conditions.

Baig pointed to laser land levelling as one example of a practical intervention that could improve resilience by helping farmers use scarce resources more efficiently. Figures presented during his address showed that the technology could reduce water use by around 20 to 30 percent while increasing yields by approximately 10 percent.

He said such interventions demonstrated that building agricultural resilience did not necessarily depend on complex technologies alone. Greater impact could also come from combining improved agronomic practices, digital advisory, crop diagnostics, weather information, crop protection and biological solutions around the specific challenges farmers faced.

“Until we empower farmers to make the right decisions, we will never be able to solve food security in Pakistan,” Baig said.

He stressed that climate resilience would ultimately require coordinated action from government, academia, researchers and the private sector to improve farmers’ access to knowledge, technology and practical solutions that could protect productivity under increasingly difficult conditions.

The economic case for such investment is also becoming stronger. A recent World Bank assessment for the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan region estimates that an additional $12 billion annually in water-efficient irrigation and agricultural innovation, together with policy reforms, could substantially increase domestic food production and raise cereal yields by 72 percent by 2050.

For Pakistan, Baig said, strengthening agriculture against climate stress was therefore not simply an environmental priority. It was increasingly linked to protecting crop output, farmer livelihoods, national food supplies and the wider economy dependent on agriculture.

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