Skip to content
Research Article Open access CC BY 4.0

An Assessment of Small-Scale Rice Farmers’ Adaptability to Climate Change: Case Study in Central Java, Indonesia

Anita A. Boling, Agus Hermawan, Lala Komalawati, Keiichi Hayashi

Asian Journal of Agricultural Extension, Economics & Sociology · pp. 1–13 · Published 29 Mar 2016

10.9734/AJAEES/2016/25246

Abstract

Focus group discussions were carried out with rainfed rice farmers in Central Java, Indonesia to understand their rice production system and assess their adaptability to current and future climate change. Results show that the farmers dealt with various stresses such as water shortage, weeds, insects, and pathogens and they spent a significant amount of money for the prevention or reduction of yield loss due to these stresses. As a result, their production cost ranged from 33% to 40% of revenue in the first season and hovered around 30% in the second season. The majority of funds used to prevent or mitigate crop losses from stresses was sourced from debts borrowed from commercial and non-commercial sources. The farmers were therefore vulnerable to any additional damage caused by stresses. Drought is one of the most damaging abiotic stresses but farmers do not have any effective countermeasures to mitigate its effects. This situation results mainly from their inability to access accurate and timely information on the type and start/end of the rainy season. This lack of information prevents them from selecting and planting the correct varieties and adopting the appropriate cultural management practices. Research needs to focus on this particular constraint to help rainfed farmers reduce crop losses from stresses, drought in particular, and to substantially move forward the process of designing more responsive and sustainable rice production models for Central Java and other similarly-situated drought-prone areas.

Climate change adaptation cropping calendar food security seasonal climate prediction

References (9)

  1. 1 Climate change and water.
  2. 2 The contribution of submergence-tolerant (Sub1) rice varieties to food security in flood-prone rainfed lowland areas in Asia [DOI]
  3. 3 New allelic variants found in key rice salt‐tolerance genes: an association study [DOI]
  4. 4 Rice grain yield and component responses to near 2°C of warming [DOI]
  5. 5 IRRI’s drought stress research in rice with emphasis on roots: accomplishments over the last 50 years [DOI]
  6. 6 Acacia nilotica-based traditional agroforestry system: effect on paddy crop and management
  7. 7 Climate change: Challenges, impacts and role of biotechnology in mitigation and adaptation
  8. 8 Rainfed lowland rice ecosystems : characterization and distribution
  9. 9 Alternate wetting and drying in Philippine rice production: feasibility study for a Clean Development Mechanism [DOI]

Cited by 3

Climate warming worsens thermal resource utilization for practical rice cultivation in China

Lei Zhang, Zhiguo Huo, Bingyun Yang · International Journal of Biometeorology · 2023

Showing 1 of 3 known citations — external sources report more than can currently be individually listed.

Related research

Article metrics

Real usage data collected on this platform.

31

Page views

0

PDF downloads

7

Outbound clicks

3

Citations

Views over time

Views by country

Approximate, from request IP at view time — not citizenship or institution. Countries with fewer than 5 views are grouped as "Other".

Traffic sources

Referring site, by host.

Views and downloads exclude known bots/crawlers. Citations combines this platform's own DOI-resolved index with each external source's own reported total — see Cited by above for individually listed citing works. Last refreshed 0 seconds ago.