Assessing Social Vulnerability of Farmers to Drought: (The Case of: Kermanshah County)

Drought has always played an important and effective role in the field of food security and livelihood of the villagers because nearly two billion people live in arid and semi-arid regions of the world (about 41%). Since the behavior and strategies of farmers in the face of drought are different in regions and for each crop, so to manage the phenomenon of drought better and reduce the vulnerability of farmers, it is necessary to increase our knowledge in this area. On the other hand, in most studies on the vulnerability of farmers to drought, less attention has been paid to its social dimension. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to assess the social vulnerability of corn farmers in Kermanshah to drought. The statistical population of this study consisted of all corn farmers in Kermanshah (1108). The sample size of 375 people was determined based on Krejcie and Morgan table using three-stage cluster sampling method. The data collection tool in this study was a researcher-made questionnaire. The formula of May Bar and Valdes (2005) was used to assess the social vulnerability of corn farmers. According to the results, it can be said that risk perception factors, economic factors, health factors, social factors and infrastructure factors, respectively, have had the greatest impact on farmerschr('39') vulnerability. In addition, farmers have the highest vulnerability in the parameters related to risk perception and the lowest vulnerability in the parameters related to the infrastructure factor.