Climate Change Impact on Wheat Yield in Pakistan (An Application of ARDL Approach)

Abstract

Wheat is an important food crop of Pakistan and used in variety of ways to produce other by-products. Pakistan falls under top ten major countries of the world producing wheat. The objectives of the study are to investigate whether hasty changes in climate exerting impacts on wheat yield in Pakistan or not. The data spanning over a time period of 1991 to 2015 were used. The variables namely area under cultivation of wheat, water availability, amount of precipitation, mean temperature, and mean relative humidity are used for the purpose of estimation. The Auto Regressive Distributed Lag Model is applied for inference of results. The results of the study indicate that both in short and long run humidity rate, water usages, and area play a significant role in increasing the wheat yield whereas, precipitation shows the negative effect on wheat yield. Also, temperature does not show any significant impact in short run, while it plays a vital role in enhancing wheat yield in the long run.