Does adoption of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices improve farmers’ crop income? Assessing the determinants and its impacts in Punjab province, Pakistan

The agriculture sector, particularly in developing countries, is the more victim of the impacts of climate change due to less adaptation. The low response to the adoption of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) practices raises questions about the factors influencing adaptation determinants. Therefore, the present study is designed to explore the adoption of CSA practices and the intensity, assessing through its determinants, and estimating its benefits in terms of its impacts on crop yield and farm income. For this purpose, 420 farmers were interviewed across three agro-ecological zones of Punjab, Pakistan. The study employs multinomial logistic regression to examine the factors that determine the adoption of single to a full package of CSA practices. Further, it uses a two-stage least square estimation technique to control the endogeneity problem and to estimate its conditional impact on crop yield and farm income. The study reveals interesting findings and demonstrates that the adoption of single to a full package of CSA practices is mostly explained by the institutional factors, financial resources, size of land holding, and level of education attained by the farmers. Similarly, more affected farmers due to climatic shocks were more intended to adopt CSA practices. Findings confirm that farmers who adopted a full set of CSA practices gain higher yield 32% and 44% kg/ha, and higher farm income 45% and 48% US$ per ha than non-adopted farmers for cotton–wheat and rice–wheat crops, respectively. Further, the impact of adaptation also varies to the intensity of CSA practices adopted by the farmers. This study suggests effective institutional and policy implications for creating awareness and financial support to the farmers to accelerate the adoption of CSA practices. These measures can enhance the farmers’ adaptive capacity that is needed for the sustainable livelihood of rural masses and food production.