Drought is a major meteorological disaster with the highest frequency, the longest duration and the widest scope of harm in the world today, which has a huge and extensive impact on agriculture, ecology, social development and national economy all over the world. The drought is an important factor affecting agricultural production which determines the stability of crop production, further relates to the national food security. China is a large agricultural country, and also is a country with frequent drought disaster. Therefore, to improve the monitoring, forecasting and warning level of agricultural drought disaster, it is necessary to deeply understand its formation, influence characteristics, drought intensity, severity and physiological process and mechanism of crop victimization. It is also an important scientific problem to reduce and prevent drought disaster losses and improve national food security production. This paper comprehensively reviews the recent internal and overseas research progress of agricultural drought with different degrees and its impact on crop production, and explores the influence characteristics and mechanism of drought from the aspects of crop morphology, physiology, cellular and molecular levels, etc. The main indicators, indexes, methods and early warning systems in current agricultural drought monitoring are reviewed around food production to cope effectively agriculture drought. According to the new characteristics of agricultural sustainable development and drought, the current situation of drought disaster prevention and mitigation and agricultural drought coping are discussed. A series of drought coping measures both adaptation and mitigation are emphasized. On this basis, combining with the needs of national, regional and industrial development, the paper puts forward the important scientific problems, research countermeasures and the prospect of discipline development which should be emphasized in the future.