A survey-based evaluation of farmers’ drought risk reduction strategies in the Po Valley (Northern Italy)

Drought is the natural hazard producing the most significant impacts on the agricultural sector. In the Mediterranean area, drought-related losses were estimated at approximately 9€ billion/year and this value is going to increase in future climate change scenarios. In this context, implementing proper risk reduction strategies and effective water resources management is fundamental in coping with drought-related water crises.

In this study, a survey has been proposed to farmers of the Po Valley (Northern Italy), in order to identify past drought and heatwaves events that hit their cultivations and to know the strategies implemented to cope with those events.

Farmers were asked to answer questions about the use of irrigation during past droughts and heatwaves, the preferred irrigation strategies during water crises (i.e., irrigate at night, irrigate a reduced area to full irrigation, crop prioritization, etc), the decisional criteria they adopted to establish when to start irrigation during a drought and the availability of insurance coverage.

Past droughts have been identified using the Standardized Precipitation and Evaponstrspiration Index (SPEI) and compared with the ones identified through the survey, highlighting two main drought events: the first one occurred in June 2003 and the other one in August 2019. This last event has been analysed in detail. Survey’s results reveal that, even if the 2003 event was more severe than that one in 2019, since all the farmers decided to irrigate their cultures during the 2003 drought, yield reduction was less than in 2019, when half of the farmers decided to not irrigate their crops during the drought event. In particular, the mean yield reduction for farmers who irrigated their crops during drought events was 35% less than for those who decided to not irrigate.

It was also found that droughts occurring in different plant growth stages have caused very different economic damages in terms of yield reduction, the amount of water resources allocated, and thus the irrigation expenses.

Regarding insurance coverage and the corresponding farmers’ grade of satisfaction, the survey’s responses revealed that farmers who applied irrigation didn’t acquire insurance coverages, and farmers who haven’t used irrigation trusted more on insurance.