Adaptation Strategies of Small Scale Farmers in Confronting Droughts in West Azerbaijan Province

In arid and semi-arid regions such as Iran, drought is considered as the most dangerous climatic structure. The drought in rural areas, which is the main source of livelihood for agriculture and the main input into agricultural activities, has a double effect, which leads to the destruction of the rural economy and the migration of villagers and ultimately to the degradation of rural quality of life.

The main purpose of this study was to identify adaptation strategies of small scale farmers in confronting droughts in west Azerbaijan province.

The statistical population of the study consisted of two groups. The first group included all small scale farmers and the second group included experts aware of drought and livelihood issues in the agricultural Jihad of West Azerbaijan province. By using Krejcie and Morgan Table, 430 people were selected by stratified sampling with optimum allocation and in the experts and specialists section, 23 were targeted.  Data analysis was done by FAHP, GIS and SPSSwin19</sub> software.

The results of fuzzy hierarchical analysis from the experts' questionnaire show that the most important adaptation strategies are economical, technical, agricultural, infrastructural and socio-cultural adaptations, but from the perspective of farmers, the most important adaptation strategies include economic, technical, technical , Social - cultural, crop and infrastructure.  

 Considering that most studies on adaptation strategies have been done and there has been no research on adaptive factors in west Azerbaijan province, this research employed experts and farmers to identify innovative approaches in this the field is considered