Drought risk perception and adaptive measures of livestock farmers in NE Romania

Droughts represent the main climatic hazard in NE Romania, affecting all agricultural activities to different extents, depending on their timing and intensity. This work investigates the drought risk perception of livestock farmers, together with their coping strategies, through a downscaled approach. Extensive fieldwork complemented by interviews and a survey was carried out during the summers of 2022 and 2023, with the main goal of gathering data from the most drought-sensitive and impacted farmer typology: livestock farmers that practice grazing, depending entirely on the amounts of precipitation and their distribution during the grazing period. The questionnaire was applied to 185 farmers with different farm settings. This included 64 questions (with response types grouped in 5-point Likert scale, dichotomic, multiple choice, or open items), structured as: (i) the risk perception of the farmers regarding climate-related hazards (awareness, perceived trends of climate hazards, impacts on water and feed supply, animal health, pasture quality, preparedness, trust in authorities); (ii) farm settings (type, size, water supply, restrictive factors, production specificity, animal breed, partnership status, perspectives), and (iii) farmer profile (age, education level, experience, implication, place of living, heat vulnerability, satisfaction level). The statistical analysis was performed in R (univariate, bivariate, and multivariate analysis). The results include a broad range of correlations and insights, from which we selected an initial subset statistically significant. Respondents considered droughts the most impactful climatic hazard, followed by heat waves, both in the last and the next 10 years. Also, about 75% of the farmers reported an increase in drought intensity and frequency in the last 10 years. In terms of preparedness, 58% of the participants reported that they implemented drought preparedness measures, although they estimate their preparedness level as medium (2.82 mean, 1.1 std). Medium to low levels were also reported by farmers when talking about trusting authorities at county (1.85 mean, 0.82 std), national (2.29 mean, 1.15 std) or European (2.34 mean, 1.26 std) scales to reduce the impact of droughts. As drought risk perception is a prominent factor to be acknowledged and integrated into drought mitigation strategies, these findings can inform decision-making at regional and local scales. This study marks the start of drought risk perception research in Romania, being the first to address this topic in the country of reference and one of the few and most detailed in Europe.