Achieving Agricultural Sustainability: A Luxury or a Necessity

Abstract

Agriculture is still the mainstay for almost 60 to 70 percent of the rural households in Pakistan. Their livelihood is directly or indirectly dependent on agriculture. However, current agricultural management practices such as intensive use of fertilizers, pesticides/insecticides, and land use intensification has adversely affected the biodiversity and environment sustainability and poses a serious threat to their livelihood. Such management practices have ramification in terms of degraded land, depleted soil fertility, contamination of ground water, and loss of biodiversity. To this end, it is important to see how such harmful impacts could be minimized in such a way that productivity and production tradeoff can be rationalized. We looked at five important crops that have residue after they're harvested: rice, wheat, sugarcane, cotton, and maize. Different crop residue management regimes have been evaluated to analyze their contribution in cost of production and consequently their impact on crop profitability. A detailed profitability analysis of five major crops has been conducted in this regard. Vulnerability of profitability under different crop residue management regimes was conducted through sensitivity analysis to check what would happen if the costs of production went down by 5%, 10%, or 15%, or if they went up by the same amounts. Our findings show that the farmer isn't making as much profit. It gets lower when we add residue management costs and lower if any uncertain situation happens. To increase profit ratios, farmers are using unsustainable practices that aren't good for the environmental health.