AGRICULTURAL DROUGHT, PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE CHALLENGES

Despite the hard work developed in understanding, predicting and monitoring drought, this phenomenon remains a major problem around the world. Agriculture is often the first sector to be impacted by drought because access to water resources and soil moisture reserves determine crop productivity. Agricultural drought depends on the crop evapotranspiration demand and the soil moisture availability to meet this demand. Several challenges are generated by agricultural drought and all of them must be efficiently and effective approached. Some of the existing drought indices fail to detect agricultural droughts and their severity, a better agriculture tailored approach is missing, new methodologies adapted to existing technologies are needed etc. The paper will debate the concept of agricultural drought and will perform an analysis of past, present and future challenges.