Abstract
In many countries, drought is the natural hazard that causes the greatest agronomic impacts. After recurrent droughts, farmers typically learn from experience and implement changes in management to reduce their future drought risks and impacts. This paper aims to understand how irrigated agriculture in a humid climate has been affected by past droughts and how different actors have adapted their activities and strategies over time to increase their resilience. After examining recent drought episodes from an agroclimatic perspective, information from an online survey was combined with evidence from semi-structured interviews with farmers to assess: drought risk perceptions, impacts of past drought events, management strategies at different scales (regional to farm level) and responses to future risks. Interviews with the water regulatory agency were also conducted to explore their attitudes and decision-making processes during drought events. The results highlight how agricultural drought management strategies evolve over time, including how specific aspects have helped to reduce future drought risks. The importance of adopting a vertically integrated drought management approach in the farming sector coupled with a better understanding of past drought impacts and management options is shown to be crucial for improving decision-making during future drought events.
Highlights
Climate change combined with population growth, increasing pressure on freshwater resources and greater regulatory demands for environmental protection will all impact on agricultural productivity (Knox et al 2016); an increase in the magnitude and frequency of extreme events, such as droughts, will exacerbate the problem (Fedoroff et al 2010; OECD 2010; Jimenez Cisneros et al 2014; Iglesias and Garrote 2015)
To demonstrate through our empirical analysis that drought resilience has increased in irrigated agriculture in the Anglian region, we focus our attention on the following issues and how they have evolved over the period under study: (1) droughts impacts on crop yield; (2) range of drought management strategies applied at the farm level; (3) collaboration amongst farmers and between farmers and the regulator
Three quarters of survey respondents had been subject to some form of abstraction constraint during all previous drought events, but the analysis revealed a decreasing trend in the proportion of farmers being affected by mandatory bans and mandatory restrictions
Summary
Climate change combined with population growth, increasing pressure on freshwater resources and greater regulatory demands for environmental protection will all impact on agricultural productivity (Knox et al 2016); an increase in the magnitude and frequency of extreme events, such as droughts, will exacerbate the problem (Fedoroff et al 2010; OECD 2010; Jimenez Cisneros et al 2014; Iglesias and Garrote 2015). The impacts of drought on agriculture are becoming an important abiotic stress in temperate and humid regions (Knox et al 2010a). The impact of droughts on food supply is a combination of the weather itself and the resilience of the different parts of the food supply chain to those impacts (Benton et al 2012). There are several definitions of resilience; for the purposes of this study, we have adopted the United Nations definition that refers to ‘‘the capacity of systems (ranging from national, local or household economies to businesses and their supply chains) to anticipate, absorb or buffer losses, and to recover’’ (UN 2015)
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