Sociohydrology

Much of what is known about smallholder farming rests on farmers’ own knowledge, and gaps between them and instruments used for measurements are usually treated as error. Reported field size, harvest and season timing from 640 maize farms in Zambia were checked against GPS boundaries, weighed harvests and satellite rainfall. The discrepancies were structured rather than random: small fields were overstated and large ones understated, while low harvests were understated and high ones overstated. Read instead as conceptual mismatch, they point to farmers and researchers holding different mental models.

Drought management is currently informed by a variety of approaches, mostly responding to drought crisis when it happens. Toward more effective and integrated drought management, we introduce a conceptual drought diagnosis framework inspired by diagnostic concepts from the field of medicine. This framework comprises five steps: 1. Initial diagnostic assessment; 2. Diagnostic testing; 3. Consultation; 4. Communication of the diagnosis; and 5. Treatment and prognosis. This framework can help drought managers to be more proactive in enabling drought-affected regions to become more drought resilient in the future.

Farmers’ climate perceptions guide adaptation, but previsouly they have been tested against weather stations rather than soil moisture, which matters more for crops. We used surveys of 1,171 Zambian farm households after the 2016 harvest recalled onset dates for recent and earlier seasons. In our analysis each farmer’s own onset rule was compared with local rainfall and modeled soil moisture. Some 88% reported rains arriving 21.9 days later than a decade ago, yet the mean perceived onset for the latest season nearly matched the physically derived mean. Recall bias sets in as early as a year after harvest, and planting rules track maize planting dates, so policy should target current variability over future change.