Abstract
In northeast Thailand, the ratio of irrigated agricultural land was only 7.6% and others were rain-fed so that climate change makes agricultural production more unstable and also makes crucial damage to the societies and economics in rural area. To mitigate these issues, it is desirable to develop and disseminate enhanced adaptation systems. In this study, we focused on weather-index insurance for climate change adaptation measure. Firstly, we evaluated how affect the rainfall amount and patterns on rice production through regression analysis by using the meteorological and agricultural statistic data from 1985 until 2004. The production of wet season rice had positive relationship(R>0.2, Slope>0.2) with 3 month accumulated rainfall (Jun-Aug) in 11 province. As a result, employed rainfall index was suitable for accurate estimation of rice production in wet season. Secondly, household survey was conducted to grasp farmer's conditions of water use, cultivation, income balance. And then, economic loss by weather induced agricultural damage was estimated and impact on farmer's household income was evaluated by using the agricultural statistic and rice price data from 1981 until 2013. Recently, agricultural economic loss of around 600 million Baht was often occurred in northeast Thailand. However farmers household income was mostly rely on non-agricultural sector so that agricultural economic loss was less than 10% of their annual income. Current weather index was designed by 5-10 years return periods in many province and that also might be the one reason of obstacles of insurance sales.
