Climate change is an emerging reality across the globe effecting the human lives directly and indirectly as well. Agriculture sector is highly exposed to the climate and would be affected to large extent in future. This study probes the impacts of climate change on net revenue of wheat growers across agroclimatic zones of Balochistan. Using multistage sampling procedure, primary data was gathered from sample of 438 wheat farmers across agroclimatic zones of Balochistan. Two seasonal data of years 2018 and 2019 were used along with seasonal climatic data of temperature and rainfall of 2017-2019. Ricardian technique was utilized to investigate the impact of changing climate on net revenue of wheat crop. Results revealed that temperature and rainfall have nonlinear relationships with Net revenue acre-1 of wheat growers. The estimated critical temperature for net revenue maximization was 21 °C. The optimal level of rainfall was 98 mm for net revenue maximization. Forecasting for all zones showed that with increase of 2 °C from the current level could decline net revenue by 8.7% and 3 °C could decrease net revenue by 15%. Zone-wise forecasting showed that increase in warming by 2 °C will adversely affect the net revenue in all zone except IV where net revenue will increase by 10%. Zone II and zone VII will suffer huge losses of 21% and 25%, respectively, of the current net revenue with 2 °C rise temperature. Government and other environmental agencies need to pay close attention to tree plantation in zones II and VII in particular and throughout Balochistan province in general to contain/moderate temperature rise in the future.
Keywords: Balochistan; Climate change; Net revenue; Pakistan; Ricardian analysis; Wheat.