Investigating and Analysis of Farmer's Willingness to Participate in Drought Management Projects in Tarom Olia County

Extended Abstract

Introduction
Since the commencement of human civilization, drought has had severe impact and sometimes disastrous on the vital human activities throughout the world. Drought is not considered in it as a tragedy” (disaster) but its effect on people and environment is catastrophic. Therefore the key point in understanding drought is to know its ecological and social aspects. Drought is occurred in both arid and humid regions. It is clear that the first step in drought management is to know its impacts in different dimensions followed by the second step which is managerial actions to reduce negative impacts. Hence effective drought management is comprehensive involvement and collaboration of government and farmers.
Iran is a vast country that due to its specific situation has different climatic and topographical characteristics. While, the amount of average annual rainfall in Iran is about 224 to 275 millimeters, the average rainfall of drought-prone areas is defined as equal to 800 millimeters rainfall and the average 133 millimeters. Iran in southern part of the northern region existences took 25 to 40 degrees north latitude is part of a vast realm of Iran in water and dry air the world. About 10 percent of the country's agriculture rainfall levels more than 500 millimeters in years (do not need the irrigation) and the remaining 90 percent irrigation needs.
The investigations indicated that the country has always been exposed to various natural disasters so that out of 40 disasters that happen in the world, 31 are occurred in Iran. The drought is of the most important natural disasters that affect many of the agricultural sub-sectors and water resource. Since drought hit vast geographical areas is seen as a more complex disaster. It also affects more people and is a costly disaster to control particularly by farmers. On the other hand, there was an increase in the world population especially in recent decades because of rising demand for increasing agricultural production. Although the increase in the lands under cultivation and eye-catching progress of science and technology in the agriculture sector will provide useful solutions to the needs of society’s food, but in many cases these methods because of non-controlling forces, cannot provide useful solutions for drought control. Since the majority of the adult population of Tarom County are active in farming sector and they consists 69.4 percent of active people, it is to be said that Tarom is basically an agriculture county. It is while the annual trend of precipitation during the past 20 years in the area indicates that the drought is ever expanding. In fact drought is the main obstacle of agricultural development in the area. The present research is going to analyze farmer’s willingness to participation in drought management projects.

Methodology
The present study aims to examine and analyze farmer's willingness to participate in drought management projects in Tarom Olia County in Zanjan province. This was a descriptive correlational study conducted through survey method. The statistical population of the study consisted of all farmers activating in Tarom Olya area (N=12000) out of which 375 people were selected as sample. The proportionate stratified random sampling technique was used to reach the respondents. The Sample size was determined using the Cochran formula. A questionnaire was developed and used to gather the data. For the analysis of data descriptive and inferential methods were used in SPSS software. The Validity of the questionnaire was approved by a panel of expert judgment .In order to measure the reliability of the main scale of the questionnaire was examined by Cornbrash’s alpha. The coefficient was equal to 0.908 which indicates an appropriate reliability.

Results and Discussion
An Analysis of data indicated that the respondents perceived the first three motivators to participate in drought management projects as follows: "insurance of horticultural and agronomic crops against drought", "adoption of pressure irrigation practices "and" participation in distilling canals ".
Survey results showed that the majority of the participants were middle-aged (30-60 years) with an average age of 42 years. The “gender of 97.9 percent of the participants was male, the majority of them (94.4 percent) were married with an average number of members of families equal to 4 people. The majority of respondents (71.2 percent) was at guidance level of education and lower ones. The results also indicated that the majority of farmers (51.7 percent) were jointly active in two areas of gardening and crop farming. The average annual income of agriculture was about 138.88 million Rials, the average level of landholding was equal to 2.02 hectares of land and for garden ownership about 1.97 hectares.
The findings revealed that there were positive and significant relationship at one percent level between farmer’s willingness to participate in drought management projects and taking part in training courses, workshop participation, knowledge on drought control, perception on economic impacts of drought, perception on environmental impacts of drought and extension visit’s participation. In addition, there were positive and significant relationship at one percent level between farmer’s willingness to participate in drought management projects and construction of demonstration farm and farmer’s perception on social impacts of drought. According to research findings, 60 percent of farmers do not use of insurance services which is due to their lack of satisfaction of these services. This may affect the efficiency of drought management programs. There were positive and significant differences at one percent level between farmer’s willingness to participate in drought management projects in different Dehestan (Blocks) of Tarom Olya County. The post Hoc test of Duncan showed that the extent of applying operations to cope with drought problems is more in Doram and Chozogh than in Abbar and Dastjerde blocks.

Conclusion
The research recommend some measures to improve the farmer's willingness to participate in drought management some of which are as follows: enhancing crop insurance services by the Ministry of Jihad-e-agriculture., governmental support of water transfer and reconstructing project, credit provision for modern irrigation system, consolidating farmers and expert's linkages in extension education activities and women's education with regard to drought control and management.