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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Land, Livelihoods and Food Security
Volume 8 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2024.1453221

Does farm mechanization improve farm performance and ensure food availability at household level? empirical evidence from Pakistan

Provisionally accepted
Muhammad Haseeb Raza Muhammad Haseeb Raza 1*Hassan Yasar Hassan Yasar 1Muhammad Faisal Muhammad Faisal 2Nasir Nadeem Nasir Nadeem 1Hazem Kassem Hazem Kassem 3Khalid M Elhindi Khalid M Elhindi 4*Nawab Khan Nawab Khan 5
  • 1 Muhammad Nawaz Shareef University of Agriculture, Multan, Pakistan
  • 2 University of Mianwali, Mianwali, Punjab, Pakistan
  • 3 Mansoura University, Mansoura, Dakahlia, Egypt
  • 4 King Saud University, Riyadh, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
  • 5 Shandong Agricultural University, Taian, Shandong Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Agriculture has a significant role in the well-being of the rural households of the developing countries. Still, its productivity is very low in these countries due to low use of mechanization at farm level. Also, extreme climate events and labor shortage at required intervals have made decisive pitch for promotion and adoption of farm mechanization for ensuring sustainable farm performance and food security in developing countries. However, limited empirical evidence is available from Pakistan, about adoption of farm mechanization and its impact on the farm performance and food availability. Therefore, primary data was collected from 384 farmers from cotton-wheat cropping system of Punjab, Pakistan by using multi-stage sampling procedure. The endogenous switching regression (ESR) model was employed to estimate the determinants of farm mechanization adoption and their associated impacts on farmers' livelihood, measured by farm performance and food availability. The findings indicate that the adoption of full mechanization across all farming operations enhances overall farm performance and improves food availability. Additionally, full mechanization leads to a substantial increase in farm performance by up to 55% and boosts food availability by approximately 125%. Our study demonstrates that the adoption of farm mechanization is strongly influenced by factors such as education, household size, landholding, off-farm employment, access to credit, and extension services.

    Keywords: Farm mechanization, Punjab, Farm performance, food availability, Food security

    Received: 30 Jun 2024; Accepted: 08 Nov 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Haseeb Raza, Yasar, Faisal, Nadeem, Kassem, Elhindi and Khan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Muhammad Haseeb Raza, Muhammad Nawaz Shareef University of Agriculture, Multan, Pakistan
    Khalid M Elhindi, King Saud University, Riyadh, 11451, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.