TY - JOUR

T1 - Extreme weather and agricultural management decisions among smallholder farmers in rural Thailand and Vietnam

AU - Liebenehm, Sabine

AU - Jaretzky, Huong

AU - Waibel, Hermann

N1 - Funding Information: We thank the three anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and suggestions. We acknowledge the use of the comprehensive Thailand Vietnam Socio Economic Panel ( www.tvsep.de ), funded by the German Research Foundation (No. 20220831434900116103). We are also thankful to Duong Quoc Non (University of Agriculture and Forestry, Hue University) for his support in using ArcGIS. All remaining errors are our own.

PY - 2023/9/30

Y1 - 2023/9/30

N2 - In this article, we explore whether and to what extent smallholder farmers in Northeastern Thailand and Central Vietnam adjust their farm-level management strategies in response to droughts. We hereby consider adjustments in flexible adaptive strategies including water management, fertilizer and pesticide application, labor, and machine use in response to a contemporaneous drought, and adjustments in crop diversification and investments in response to a previous year drought. To that end, we combine longitudinal household data from the two regions from 2007 to 2017 with monthly high-resolution rainfall and temperature data to characterize droughts at the subdistrict level. We find that Thai farmers scale down input costs in terms of fertilizer and hired labor and outsource tasks to service providers with equipment such as a combine, especially when exposed to extreme droughts. Their diversification and investment response seems, however, muted. While Vietnamese farmers are also reducing fertilizer use, they are expanding both the number of hired laborers and rented machinery services. They are also diversifying their cropping portfolio and investing in agricultural equipment.

AB - In this article, we explore whether and to what extent smallholder farmers in Northeastern Thailand and Central Vietnam adjust their farm-level management strategies in response to droughts. We hereby consider adjustments in flexible adaptive strategies including water management, fertilizer and pesticide application, labor, and machine use in response to a contemporaneous drought, and adjustments in crop diversification and investments in response to a previous year drought. To that end, we combine longitudinal household data from the two regions from 2007 to 2017 with monthly high-resolution rainfall and temperature data to characterize droughts at the subdistrict level. We find that Thai farmers scale down input costs in terms of fertilizer and hired labor and outsource tasks to service providers with equipment such as a combine, especially when exposed to extreme droughts. Their diversification and investment response seems, however, muted. While Vietnamese farmers are also reducing fertilizer use, they are expanding both the number of hired laborers and rented machinery services. They are also diversifying their cropping portfolio and investing in agricultural equipment.

KW - drought

KW - farm-level coping

KW - Southeast Asia

KW - SPEI

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85169330941&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/agec.12793

DO - 10.1111/agec.12793

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85169330941

VL - 54

SP - 593

EP - 622

JO - Agricultural Economics (United Kingdom)

JF - Agricultural Economics (United Kingdom)

SN - 0169-5150

IS - 5

ER -