The scientific collective assessment on “Agriculture and drought” steered by INRA in 2006 showed a lack of quantitative analyses on the economic impact of a drought in France. In response, the INRA economists have built an original coupling between the STICS agronomic model developed by INRA and an economic model. The aim was to assess the cost of drought episodes to a representative farmer of the Midi-Pyrénées region and to determine whether his short or long term decisions help reducing this cost significantly. The results obtained indicate that, in the short term, the cost induced by the drought can be high. In the long term, that is to say if farming systems can be modified by the farmer, the cost induced by drought is attenuated in a visible way by these additional adaptation capacities. Moreover, the implementation of early-warning drought mechanisms may be beneficial to Midi-Pyrénées farmers.