From drought to recovery: How extreme drought drives adaptive behaviour and grain production efficiency in Sichuan and Chongqing, China

Climate change has increased the intensity and frequency of extreme droughts, exacerbating the global food crisis and threatening food security. As the primary decision-makers in grain production, farmers' capacity to adapt to extreme droughts is critical for building agricultural resilience and ensuring regional food security. Using the rare 60-year extreme drought in China's Sichuan and Chongqing regions as a case, this study analyses survey data from 1011 farm households. We employ the endogenous switching regression (ESR) model, which allows us to account for selection bias when estimating the impact of disasters, to examine how extreme drought affects the grain production efficiency (GPE) of farm households and to uncover the role of adaptive behaviours in this process. Our results show that: (1) Farmers who experienced extreme drought saw an unexpected improvement in grain production efficiency in the subsequent year, revealing a positive "post-disaster recovery" effect. (2) Quantile regression results indicate that the impact of extreme drought on GPE displays a non-linear, inverted "U" pattern across efficiency levels. (3) Mechanism analysis reveals that adaptive behaviours adopted after drought—especially farmland management and risk-sharing strategies—are key in improving GPE in the following season. (4) Heterogeneity analysis shows that a higher supply of meteorological information enhances the positive effects of adaptive behaviour, and that farmers with stronger risk perceptions achieve better efficiency outcomes after drought. Overall, our findings clarify the causal links and mechanisms between extreme drought, farmer adaptation, and grain production efficiency. The evidence supports the sustainable livelihood framework, highlighting that rational individuals adopt adaptive strategies in response to external pressures, and echoes resilience theory by demonstrating that agricultural systems can enhance their capacity to recover from shocks.