Drought classification for policy planning and sustainable agricultural production in India.

Abstract

Droughts are recognized as an environmental disaster and have attracted the attention of environmentalists, ecologists, hydrologists, meteorologists, geologists and agricultural scientists. Successful water management to cope with water scarcity requires the understanding of respective governing processes and causes. Based on different approaches, drought is classified in four classes, meteorological, hydrological, agricultural and socioeconomic drought. Various drought coping mechanisms of cultivating drought tolerant dual purpose crops, mixed cropping, farming system, drought hardy millets, sesame, livestock rearing, storing of grains and fodder during normal or excessive rainfall years are already practiced in our country. In a mixed system, some component will give some return without a complete collapsing of whole crop. Thus, these mitigations strategies may be benificial for policy planning and sustainable crop production.