ABSTRACT
This paper addresses the critical issue of the long-term productivity and sustainability of Pakistan’s irrigated agriculture. District-level data were assembled for 33 crops and 17 input categories to estimate changes in total factor productivity in four production systems in the Punjab Province. Average growth in total factor productivity was moderately high at 1.26%; but wide regional variation in productivity growth was observed, with negative growth in the wheat/rice system. A second disaggregated data set for soil and water quality was then used to analyze underlying effects of resource degradation through application of a cost function. Continuous and widespread resource degradation, as measured by the soil and water quality variables, had a significant negative effect on productivity, with the largest effect in the wheat/rice system, where resource degradation more than offset the productivity effects of technological change. Degradation of agro-ecosystem health was related in part to modern technologies, such as use of fertilizer and tubewell water, offsetting a substantial part of their contribution to productivity. The results call for urgent analysis of technology and policy options to arrest resource degradation.
