Socioeconomic impact of 2005-2008 drought in Andalusian agriculture.

Meteorological drought is defined as the event that arises when precipitation is lower than average and initially affects rainfed crops; this is transformed into hydrological drought when persistent drought affects water storage. We have studied the economic impact of multiyear droughts by applying the economic surplus to the last severe drought (2005-2008) in Andalusia. The method is applied to both rainfed and irrigated agriculture.

Does drought always cause economic losses in agriculture? An empirical investigation on the distributive effects of drought events in some areas of Southern Europe.

Studies on the impacts of drought usually make the implicit assumption that there will always be a negative effect on the environment, the economy and society. However, other approaches, based for example on the framework provided by the consumer surplus theory, try to focus on the distributive effects of drought. In this paper, in the wake of such approaches, we address the question of the distributive effects of drought on agriculture, exploring and studying in depth the characteristics, the signs and the magnitude of the socio-economic impacts of droughts on specific significant agricultural areas in Europe.