Farmers’ coping and adaptive strategies towards drought in Pishin district, Balochistan

Abstract

Background: Balochistan province is prone to droughts and had been severely impacted during the drought from 1998-2002. Orchard and livestock farming are the main sources of earning livelihoods of the people.

Objectives: The objective of this study is to understand farmers’ coping and adaptive mechanism towards drought hazard.    

Methods: The study is primarily based on primary data collected through a structured questionnaire from 215 households. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to assess the coping and adaptive strategies being practiced by the farmers.

Results: The study results demonstrate that during recent long dry period, farmers have shown considerable strength in handling adverse effect of drought on their agricultural practices. A number of various adaptation initiatives have been employed at both on-farm and off-farm utilizing their indigenous methods under the regional conditions to minimize their exposure to drought hazards. These techniques involve crop diversification and mixed cropping, water management that include high span of watering and decreased in area; digging tube wells; water channel constructions/cemented pond for water storage; buying water; use pipe and drip/bubbler system for watering; divides the garden and use more soil around the tree; extra pruning of trees branches; and cutting down some trees for purpose of raising survival of fruit bearing trees; agricultural inputs adjustments, seeking off-farm employment, assets depletion, consumption smoothing, borrowing, and migrating to other places for alternative sources of income.

Conclusions: Farmers adapted number of ex-ant and ex-post coping/adaptive strategies to deal with drought hazard. However, investigation of the strategies used by the farmers indicates that most of the coping and adaptive strategies implemented by them in the study area are more reactive rather than more proactive, autonomous rather than well-planned and the current adaptive capacity of the farmers is still inadequate to cope with the future challenges of drought.