Orange grower's perception of drought impacts and strategies for mitigation and adaptation: A study of the Vidarbha region in India

Abstract

Vidarbha, a region in Maharashtra, India, is famous for its sweet-sour-flavoured Nagpur Orange. Vidarbha is witnessing droughts after every alternate year resulting in crop failure and causing distress to orange growers. The present study attempts to – 1) identify critical challenges Vidarbha orange growers face during drought impact and 2) examine the farmers' perception and awareness about drought impacts, and different adaptation and mitigation strategies in practice at the farmer's level. This research used a field study approach in the drought-prone Vidarbha region to acquire orange farmers' perceptions of the drought impact. We have used a three-stage method to carry out this study. In the first stage, a Delphi method is adopted to identify and validate orange growers' challenges due to drought impact. The second stage comprises utilising multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM)-based best-worst method to prioritise and determine the most critical challenges. This is followed by descriptive statistical analysis in the third stage to determine the overall perception of orange growers about drought and its adaptation and mitigation strategies. It is observed through findings that – “inadequate water bodies, lack of availability of capital, and high cost of drip irrigation” are critical challenges orange growers witness during drought. While “installing an efficient irrigation system and pest control” are the adaptation strategies, and “seeking guidance from the agriculture department” and “reliance on weather forecast” are the mitigation strategies widely adopted by Nagpur orange growers to alleviate drought stress.