Author : Tran Cao Uy

Summary : This study was aimed to explore the perception on drought and farmers' adaptation in maize production to cope with drought. Additionally, it also investigated factors impact on adaptation of farmers in Dakrong - a highland district of Quang Tri province, Vietnam. The results revealed the trough the assessment questions, almost farmer in the study area was classified as low to medium perception on drought (75%), especially, young farmers, ethnic minority, the poor or female groups had significant lower perception than others. In terms of adaptation, it partly reflected the relation between perception and adaptation when these above mentioned groups had low adaptation proportion in each adaptation measure. Besides, a significant percentage of farmers (25.56%) never applied any adaptation measures whilst, the rest of farmers adapted one or two practices and they mainly focused on "cultivating one season", "intercropping", and "changing to another crops". The Multinomal Logit model indicated that individual characteristics (such as ethnicity, education, and gender); socio-economic characteristics(household type, maize land area,maize income and non-farm income, distance from home to market); access to information and access to credit; and perception level were significant and negative impact on no adaptation group(ADP_0) and positive influence on farmers adapt by combining measures (ADP_3). Whilst, ADP_1 and ADP_2 were significantly impacted by maize land area, maize income and distance from home to market. These components positively and negatively influenced on ADP_1 and ADP_2, respectively.