Impact of unprecedented drought in intensive subsistence agriculture and food security: issues, policy practice gap and the way forward

Drought is caused by imbalances in the hydrological cycle's variables, especially lack of rainfall, which is frequently brought on by climate change and can occur anywhere on the Earth. This study aims to conduct a detailed seasonal drought analysis through the seasonal precipitation statistics, groundwater level, and soil moisture in Bankura District during 1991–2022. The study utilized the standardized precipitation index, Standardized water-level Index, and Standardized soil moisture index to assess the meteorological drought, hydrological drought, and agricultural drought at multiple time scales. The three drought indices have been calculated by the ‘Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index’ package using ‘R’ programming, which make it possible to compare the drought situations in various climatic zones. The three months standardized precipitation index was used in the seasonal analysis of different types of drought. The modified Mann–Kendall trend analysis was used to acquire information on the course of the drought and rains. Correlation analysis was also done to evaluate the dependency of agricultural drought upon the meteorological drought and hydrological drought. Seasonal droughts in meteorological drought, hydrological drought, and agricultural drought have been compared to the production of the four major seasonal crops. The trend of rainfall showed -0.184, -1.149, -1.263 and -3.598 mm decreases in pre-monsoon, winter, post-monsoon and monsoon season respectively. The occurrence of drought with negative standardized precipitation index, standardized water-level index, and standardized soil moisture index values frequently depicted dry events in the study area. The results show that the drought harms the productivity of food grains, with production losses of 122.77 thousand tonnes and yield rate losses of 292.37 kg per hectare from the average, respectively. This study also considered non-structural and structural efforts from the governmental, stakeholder, and research communities to mitigate the seasonal drought, frame drought-resilient agriculture, and promote sustainability.