Farmers left out in Indonesia's preparations

Made Arya Kencana and Fidelis E. Satriastanti in the Jakarta Globe (Indonesia): Scientists have criticized the government for failing to prepare farmers to adapt to the effects of climate change, which could have a major impact on the country’s food security. Unseasonal rains are expected to wreak havoc on the country’s rice, cocoa, rubber and palm oil production this year.

Dewa Ngurah Suprapta, president of the International Society for Southeast Asian Agricultural Sciences, said on Monday that funding for research into the issue had been woeful. “Compared to other countries in Southeast Asia, Indonesia is lagging,” he said on the sidelines of an ISSAAS seminar in Bali. “For instance, the research budget here is a hundredth of that in Malaysia.”

As a result, he said, the government did not have enough information to be able to advise farmers on what actions to take. “This year, the effects of climate change can be seen in the protracted rainy season, where we were still getting rain in May and September,” he said. “Given such conditions, the government should have put out advisories on planting patterns and what crops were suitable for those conditions.”

Dewa, who is also a professor of agriculture at Bali’s Udayana University, said addressing climate change would require an integrated approach through short-, middle- and long-term policies. “In the short term, we need to plant crop varieties that can withstand the given conditions,” he said. “In the long term, we need to develop new varieties that can withstand a range of weather changes.”…

From the Tropenmuseum Collection via Wikimedia Commons, a tea plantation on Sumatra, 1954