Rice Drought And Farm Households' Coping Strategies In Eastern India, Northeastern Thailand And Southern China

The monsoon climate always had serious negative impact on the agricultural production in East Asia, South Asia and Southeast Asia, especially on the countries and districts where rice cultivation is the predominant agricultural activity . The drought that is one of the main disasters resulting from the monsoon climate dramatically damages the farm households' welfare and influences their living. Today, although the food in the world is relatively surplus and the rice yield has been largely increased, the farm households in the drought-prone districts are still poverty-stricken. They have wisely arranged their resources to try to cope with the rice drought problem, but the limited resource could not take them over a safety situation in some cases.Long-time practice used to cope with drought risk by farm households has resulted in the set of ex ante and ex post coping mechanisms, and researches show that those coping mechanisms are wise in terms of their own resources, it is however not true in terms of the social or macro-utilization of resources. In fact, the risk coping mechanisms in Chinese rural society are based on the farm households and this kind of mechanism plays an important role in traditional societies. At present, the domestic research on the farm households' risk coping strategies is far from enough. Based on this fact, this paper will introduce the farm households' risk coping strategies in foreign countries. Besides, it will deeply understand how the farm households are influenced by drought risks and how they operate the implements to decrease the negative impact. The deep understanding will also provide the micro-level information at a farm household's level which makes the technological and political intervention more efficient in respect of rice production in southern China.The paper's research objective will focus on describing and analyzing the rice drought characters, degree, loss and the farm households' strategies in eastern India, northeast Thailand and southern China respectively at the farm household level, then make a comparative analysis and give suggestions related to how to strengthen the rice drought risk management. The paper will employ research methods such as document review, problem presentation, outline design, fieldwork and data collection, problem answering through statistical description and objective analysis.The paper is divided into five chapters. The first chapter introduces research justification, research objective, data and methods , organizing of the paper's content.The second and third chapter respectively recognizes the rice drought characters and degree, describes the rice drought loss and summarizes the households' coping strategies in eastern India and in northeast Thailand. The forth chapter recognizes the rice drought characters and degree, describes and analyzes the rice drought loss, summarizes the households' coping strategies in southern China. The fifth chapter makes a comparative analysis among the three regions and gives a set of technological and policy suggestions.