This study investigates the factors that affect farmers’ access to Food Security and Agricultural Credit (FSAC) services for the farmers of Pakistan who have no access to banking but have a feasible farm business. Using multiple regressions and logistic analysis, the authors revealed the determinants of farmers’ financial literacy and analyzed the variables which affected the farmers’ accessibility to FSAC. Results indicated that the average financial literacy of respondents was at a moderate level. It was affected by the age of respondents, length of their education, distance to nearby cities, ownership of bank accounts, annual income, and financial education experience. The FSAC accessibility was also impacted by the area of cultivated land, interest rate, collateral, farms’ income, financial literacy index, credit accessibility experiences, the legal status of farmer groups, and the amount of a loan. Some of the issues that prevent farmers from having widespread access to the FSAC include the lack of loan need, lack of FSAC awareness, lack of collateral, loan usury perspective, loan rejection experience, fear of borrowing from the bank, and inactive farmer groups. The study contributes to the existing literature on the determinants of farmers’ access and choice of credit sources by using a primary data set.

The unceasingly augmenting emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) has contributed substantially to the degradation of the key environmental parameters and the deterioration of performance of the agricultural sector globally. The food insecurity problem has been aggravated consequently. Due to a variety of economic and social issues, many farmers in developing economies use low-efficient and environmentally unfriendly agricultural practices. Adopting innovative technologies and practices linked with sustainable farming remains a complex issue across the developing world. In particular, financial exclusion and low financial literacy are commonly cited as the critical obstacles to achieving sustainable development. To contribute to resolving this development problem, the study attempts to investigate the effects of financial inclusion and literacy on establishing a sustainable performance of farms. A structured questionnaire was used to collect the data from 220 farmers within the Central Punjab region of Pakistan. Small-scale farms demonstrated a potential to sustain their performance by improving financial inclusion and financial literacy. Trust in extension services for agriculture plays a significant role in moderating the impact of eight independent variables (knowledge, skills, attitude, behavior, access, usage, quantity, welfare) on sustainable farm performance. The study implies that increased trust in financial services is essential for improving sustainable performance in the agricultural sector. The effect imposed by financial actors is crucial for establishing trust in financial services linked to sustainability within the agricultural industry.

Today’s agricultural management decisions impact food security and sustainable ecosystems, even when operating with back-to-basic operations. In such endeavors, policymakers usually need a quantitative tool, such as trade-offs margins, to effectively adjust resource consumption or production. This paper applies the weighted slack-based measurement (SBM-DEA) program to 136 developing countries’ agricultural performance. First, it finds the current agricultural efficiency and then makes marginal trade-offs on desirable-output variables (such as crop yield and forest area) to see the effective changes in undesirable-output (such as methane and nitrous oxide emissions). The results show that choosing effective marginal trade-offs does not deteriorate the relative efficiency of the decision-making units (DMUs) below the efficient frontier line. Thus, such a method enables the decision-makers to determine the best marginal trade-off points to reach the optimal efficiencies and decide which output factor needs special brainstorming to design effective policy.