Abstract

The intensified water scarcity and management issues in the agricultural domain due to climate change pose significant economic and environmental risks to sustainable food production. Conventional farming practices are widely recognized to cause excessive water consumption, resource waste, and elevated costs. This demands business-oriented strategies to enhance water use and environmental efficiency. This research focuses on a business-oriented integrated strategy framework to improve water-use efficiency in agricultural farming practices in the face of changing climate conditions. A mixed-method research design was utilized, with analyses based on sustainability management analysis, comparative resource analysis, and statistical assessment of agricultural key performance indicators. The data were collected from irrigation-based farming activities and analyzed using the efficiency measurement and comparative performance evaluation methods. The presented framework comprises a smart irrigation system, resource management, and an optimized farming approach within a climate adaptation strategy. It showed that after applying the proposed strategy, the reduction in water use amount was 34.7% and the improvement in irrigation water use efficiency was 27.5%. Simultaneously, crop productivity increased by 22.8% while operational costs decreased by 18.6%. Besides, the overall resource-use efficiency increased by 31.2%, and water wastage decreased by 25.4%, according to the environmental assessment, indicating that the farming system has been enhanced in its ability to cope with climate change. It concluded that a combination of a business management approach and an environmental-savings strategy can considerably boost the resource-use efficiency of the farming system and improve its sustainability performance. Based on the findings, the suggested framework provides relevant and useful information to policy-makers, the agricultural business industry, and other stakeholders to address the issue of a climate change-adaptive, economically sustainable farming system.