Climate field schools in Indonesia: coping with climate change and beyond

Yunita Winarto, Kees Stigter, Esti Anantasari and Siti Nur Hidayah

Climate Field Schools (CFSs) are based on the experiences obtained with “Farmer Field Schools” developed in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) extension. The latter gave Indonesia some international fame over the last decades. Application of such schools in coping with climate disasters, including climate change itself, appears a very good idea.

The CFSs were formulated for experiments in 2005 and 2006, starting in Indramayu, West Java, by the Directorate General of Food Crops (Ministry of Agriculture, Jakarta), the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC, Bangkok), BMG (Agency for Meteorology and Geophysics, the Indonesian National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS), Jakarta) and IPB (University of Agriculture, Bogor). The main general aim of such CFSs is to increase farmers’ knowledge on the application of climate information in their decision making.

Indonesian farmers want to be better prepared for climate change and the government should help farmers to improve their capacity to apply climate forecasts and other agrometeorological information to help them improve their activities (Wardany, 2007). Government  extension organized in 2007 also a CFS (or a Farmer Field School on climate change) in Gunung Kidul, Wonosari, Yogyakarta Special Province, Java. Gunung Kidul is located in a hilly dry area. The school’s alumni are practicing dry multiple cropping of rice, corn, cassava, sorghum, tobacco and vegetables. Rice is here a one season crop, only in the rainy season.

What the school’s alumni wanted to apply was particularly related to improved water management by ridges in rice fields. However, more questions than answers came from the experience of the alumni group. In the context of aftercare by the Academy Professorship Indonesia (API) in Social Sciences and Humanities, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta, we had sessions with the alumni farmers of several days in December 2007 and May 2008, to try to deal with those questions in a participatory approach. Ethnographic fieldwork was carried out by the API team since May 2007 to observe the school, the participants’ local knowledge and practices, their interpretation of the school’s teaching, and responses to the climate.

Climate change and response farming

The main issue in Indramayu was the determination of an appropriate planting time for rice under the condition of rainy seasons arriving later and with higher variability in time. Climate change in the whole of Indonesia is real. Rainy seasons on Java and Bali for example start later, stop earlier, but deliver roughly similar amounts of rain, resulting in higher rainfall intensities (Boer, 2007). The Gunung Kidul Javanese farmers used to refer to their cosmology, pranata mangsa, based on the Javanese lunar cyclical calendar, in determining the planting schedule (Daldjoeni 1986; Indrowuryanto 1999). Each month is this way related to the position of stars and environmental phenomena.

What confuses and frightens the farmers most is that the guidance they received from their environment through pranata mangsa and local observations, built up over time, is no longer of much use. Examples are falling leaves at the start of the rainy season, singing birds or noisy insects indicating that the rain would come. In line with common African dryland experience, now false starts of the rainy season and unusual dry spells are experienced.

One reply by farmers to variabilities in climate, particularly in rainfall, has always been in attempts to respond to the ongoing season by adaptations. This involves crops, crop varieties, planting and other cultural measures, at the same time managing and manipulating soil, water and microclimate where possible. This so called response farming could be improved by better forecasts and planning, and a maximum understanding of in-field water harvesting principles. Of course, not all farming systems have sufficient flexibility.

Improving such coping strategies for increasing resilience within the limits that the environment sets appears the road to go. The best example in the agrometeorological literature are the so called pilot projects in Mali, where the NMHS is well organized in receiving and providing information during the growing seasons that makes local response farming much easier to perform (e.g. Diarra and Stigter, 2008). CFSs could improve on the scale and the efficiency of interactions with the farmers.  

Farmers in Gunung Kidul, representative for Indonesian farmers in rainfed agriculture, are interested in understanding the causes of climate change better and to hear about the basic processes behind it. These were not explained well in the CFS. At all occasions in the school’s aftercare meetings, we tried to explain in simple terms what global warming means, what most likely causes it and what the consequences are for the atmospheric circulations  that determine weather and climate. We emphasized that this is not going away, that larger numbers of more, and more serious, extreme events have already occurred and will occur more frequently in the future, also in Indonesia (Boer, 2007). This is contradictory to their cyclical cosmological knowledge.

Response farming is known by farmers but can be improved and extended beyond their empirical methods by the use of experience from elsewhere and of science and participatory experiments. This can be done through CFSs if certain requirements are increasingly fulfilled. Climate change complicates response farming but this does not change the principles of the approach.

Climate related matters

If anything became clear to us in our interactions with farmers, it is that climate change is just another entry into the necessary building up of more resilience in the livelihood of farmers. Soil and water management, pests and diseases, crop choices and their adaptations are all related issues on which the farmers in Gunung Kidul had, on their own initiative, collected material that they wanted to discuss with us. This means that ultimately only the complete livelihood approach counts for FFSs/CFSs.

Soil and water management

Farmers have their own ways of classifying soils according to types, colours, and the combination between the two (light-white-lime, light-red-lime, heavy-black-clay, and light-black-clay). They learned from the CFS that water run-off is more severe in light lime than in heavy clay soils. However, farmers perceived that heavy soils are suffering more from water run-off.  We reasoned that with such differences in arguments it appears often that other factors are involved. We suggested that slope, also small slopes, and soil surface characteristics (state of tillage, surface cover and other obstacles to flow) were often more determining for soil loss and water run-off than other soil properties that determine infiltration, although these come in as well.

Farmers also questioned about organic versus contaminated soils and which crops to grow on which soils (see further down).We argued that soil improvement is particularly a case for organic matter and this appeared in line with the school’s teaching on soil improvement (no burning, collection of falling leaves and other biomass). We also discussed how contaminated soil gets cleaner after applying an organic approach and whether and how inorganic fertilizer may be combined with organic fertilizer in the long run.

Farmers did implement the extension’s advice in building in-field ridges to preserve water. They had done yield observations to show that ridges did work positively in rainfall harvesting. However, the official rain forecasting and prediction was generally found of little use, because not sufficiently downscaled, and this produced their interest in making their own observations.

We argued particularly on including knowledge on the root systems in soil and water management. Crops may react with their root systems to availability of water, availability of fertilizers and competition from intercrops, including trees, depending on the soil horizons they can use. Ridges influence this also.

Pest and diseases

Prior to the CFS, farmers were ignorant of the relationship between pest population and microclimate condition as learned in the school. On the basis of their observations and experiences in the school and aftercare, the farmers were all convinced that the less rainfall there is, the more insect pests they suffer from. Under below normal rainfall, particularly chilli and vegetables are attacked. Ants are not seen as harmful.

Only in India there are interesting developments taking place regarding fighting pests and diseases using warnings through operational agrometeorological services via the Indian Meteorological Department, which are expected to become more operational soon (Stigter with Rathore, 2008). This is even more important because changes in rainfall patterns result in shifting pest and disease problems.

Choice of crops

Prior to the CFS, farmers had already grown suitable crops related to seasonal climatic conditions. Their knowledge was enriched and strengthened through the school’s learning and observations. The farmers’ presentation under this subject and the following day in the field during our visits, showed the great knowledge that farmers have acquired on suitable crops and the adaptations they are performing to changing conditions related to climate/weather or market developments. It is therefore a wrong practice to make scenarios for the future based on extension of present practices and systems. Farmers do adapt more often and faster than most often assumed.

However, notwithstanding much local knowledge, farmers also feel insecure. To increase resilience, there appears a need for much better advice on which crops to grow, in which rotation, on which soils under which soil conditions with respect to fertilizer history, water use efficiency potential, soil depth and aeration as well as presently changing rainfall patterns. They need help to do this more efficiently and to disseminate results beyond the local trials; but the crop choice is a dynamic practice on most soils and will have to be more so under a changing climate.

We have explained that in a recent discussions, on how to get away in Indonesia from the dependence on rice (and this was before the present price crises), it had been proposed that new cropping systems should be locally tested “on farm”, under present climatic conditions, with government funding in a participatory approach.  FFSs/CFSs could play a role in this participation and in getting results applied.

Adaptation to climate change

As to “Climate change anticipation”, it was argued that farmers are good observers and experimenters. They do adapt but could adapt even more, from their own experience and results of the above suggested participatory experiments. They do not have the habit, however, to take notes of their own experiences and observations. In the present unanticipated climate variability, they should note down the particulars of each season to document the changes that are occurring. An argument frequently used by the farmers of Gunung Kidul themselves was that documentation is one of the missing assets compared to better organized societies. This is particularly important under conditions of rapid change as are occurring now. We mentioned examples of some traditional societies, where information on changes in plant, tree and crop phenology had actually been preserved. These examples can be abundantly found in the LEISA magazine.

Yunita T. Winarto, Senior lecturer in anthropology, University of Indonesia, and Academy Professorship Indonesia  in Social Sciences and Humanities, The Graduate School, Gadjah Mada University, Jl. Teknika Utara, Pogung, Sleman, Yogyakarta 55281, Indonesia. E-mail: winyun@indo.net.id;

Kees Stigter, Visiting Professor in developing countries for Agromet Vision, Poncogati, Block Taman, RT8/RW11, Kec. Curadami, Bondowoso 68251 (or P.O. Box 16, 68208 Bondowoso), Indonesia. E-mail: cjstigter@usa.net

Esti Anantasari & Siti Nur Hidayah, graduate students and research assistants of Prof. Yunita T. Winarto at her address. E-mails: esti_anantasari@yahoo.com, enh_hidayah@yahoo.com

References

Boer, Rizaldi, 2007. Is our agriculture system resilient to climate change? The Jakarta Post of 4 December, p. 9.

Daldjoeni, N. 1986. "Menyelamatkan Penanggalan Pertanian Jawa" [Saving the Javanese agricultural calendar] in N. Daldjoeni and A. Suyitno (eds) Pedesaan, Lingkungan dan Pembangunan [Rural Society, Environment and Development]. Bandung, Penerbit Alumni.

Diarra, Daouda Z. and Kees Stigter, 2008. Operational meteorological assistance to rural areas in Mali: development-results-perspectives. Translation from the French of Conclusions and Recommendations of a recent French summary report. Available at the INSAM website (www.agrometeorology.org) under “Accounts of Operational Agrometeorology” of 19 February 2008.

Indrowuryanto, 1999.  Keselarasan hubungan manusia dengan lingkungan alamnya [The harmony between people and their environment], in Petani, Merajut Tradisi Era Globalisasi: Pendayagunaan Sistem Pengetahuan Lokal dalam Pembangunan [Farmers, Linking Tradition with the Globalization Era: Using Local Knowledge Systems in Development.] Edited by K. Adimihardja. Bandung: Hutama Utama Press.

Stigter, Kees with Rathore, L.S., 2008. How to organize coping with crop disease risks of farmers in poor countries. Paper presented at an Asian Pacific Network (APN) project meeting in Dhaka, Bangladesh, on 12 February.

Wardany, Irawarti, 2007. RI farmers told to adapt to climate change. The Jakarta Post of 20 September, p. 9.

[An adapted and edited version of this paper appeared in “Low External Input Sustainable Agriculture (LEISA)” Magazine 24/4 of December 2008, pp. 16-18, with the title “Climate |Field Schools in Indonesia: improving “response farming” to climate change.” KS.]

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Box: Writings by Kees Stigter on which parts of the paper have been built.

Stigter, Kees, 2007a. Addressing climate change in agriculture. The Jakarta Post, of 15 October, p. 7.

Stigter, Kees, 2007b. An account of visiting those involved in climate field schools in Indonesia. Available at the INSAM website (www.agrometeorology.org) under “Accounts of Operational Agrometeorology”. Also taken up in Kees Stigter, Coping with climate risks in agriculture needs farmer oriented research and extension policies. Scientia Agricola (Brazil), in print.

Stigter, Kees, 2007c. Between success and expansion: farmer field schools in North-East Bali. Available at the INSAM website (www.agrometeorology.org) under “Needs for agrometeorological solutions to farming problems” of October.

Stigter, Kees, 2007d. New cropping systems to help farmers. The Jakarta Post of 22 January, p.7.

Stigter, Kees, 2008a. Climate change is confusing Indonesian farmers: a visit to another climate field school in Indonesia, that of Gunung Kidul near Yogyakarta. Available at the INSAM website (www.agrometeorology.org) under “Accounts of Operational Agrometeorology” in January. Also available on   http://farmerfieldschool.net/mailman/listinfo/global-ffsl_farmerfieldschool.net

Stigter, Kees, 2008b. Worries of climate field school farmers in Gunung Kidul, Yogyakarta, Indonesia: climate change, water use efficiency and adaptations of cropping systems. Available at the INSAM website (www.agrometeorology.org) under “Accounts of Operational Agrometeorology” in May.