Quantifying Farmers’ Initiatives and Capacity to Cope with Drought: A Case Study of Xinghe County in Semi-Arid China

Hao Guo, Yaoyao Wu, Yanrui Shang, Hao Yu and Jing’ai Wang
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Hao Guo: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, MOE, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Yaoyao Wu: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, MOE, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
Yanrui Shang: College of Resources and Environment Science, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang 050024, China
Hao Yu: Department of Geography & Tourism Faculty of Science, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 3001 Leuven, Belgium
Jing’ai Wang: Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, MOE, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 7, 1-19

Abstract: Farmers living in a state of poverty in semi-arid areas are the main victims of drought. They suffer most from drought, which makes it particularly important to assess their capacity to cope with it. The present study developed a new approach for such assessment. Famers’ resources and initiatives to deal with drought were evaluated, and appropriate coping strategies are proposed by analyzing the differences between the coping capacities of two categories of farmers; tenants (with large holdings) and smallholders. Tenants’ capacity to cope with drought was 1.7 times that of smallholders. Also, tenants showed greater initiative during droughts, whereas smallholders made greater efforts in preparing for droughts. Farmers’ resources were positively correlated to the degree of their initiative (correlation coefficient = 0.49). Farmers showed greater initiative when they had larger holdings and were less dependent on agricultural income. The state should give more financial support to subsidy-dependent farmers and encourage smallholders—whose major income comes from crops—to augment their income through livestock husbandry. Such a policy would prove more conducive to increasing the capacity of not only local farmers but also of the entire region to cope with droughts and to promote sustainable development of local agriculture.

Keywords: coping with drought; semi-arid area; rain-fed agriculture; smallholders versus tenants; farmers’ coping strategies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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