What I'm actually doing here

Believe it or not there is a fair amount of work happening here. We’ve joined onto a larger, ongoing initiative at IPB and CCROM called IMHERE (unclear what that acronym means) – the mission is to understand how agriculture can better adapt to seasonal climate variability. We’re particularly focused on two districts in Java, which again is one of the largest islands in the country, home to half of the population and a great deal of its agricultural productivity. Another fun fact: Indo is the 4th largest population in the world, behind China, India and the US.

Our particular piece of the project will be to investigate how best a weather insurance program could be structured in these districts, as each serves as a representative sample of cropping patterns (irrigated rice and rain-fed rice + other staple crops such as soybean and maize) seen across the country, should such a program be scaled up to this level.

We already know many of the answers to help farmers deal with climate variability, it’s just a matter of how to make these solutions simple, reliable and affordable. If it’s going to be a dry year, for example, coping strategies include harvesting water and planting different variety of seed better adapted for less rain. But if you don’t have those technologies… how do you get them? And how is it paid for?

The idea behind this type of insurance is to link a pre-determined weather “index” (rainfall level, for example) to a payout. If the season doesn’t provide enough rainfall and crops fail, the payout is automatic: no BS with claims and waiting for money to arrive. Our job, in discussing with farmers, extension workers, local agronomists and municipal leaders is to start to figure out when and how much those levels should be set.

The plan was to travel this upcoming week to work start conducting interviews, but being that we’re on Indonesian time and not New York City time, it appears that our field work will be delayed another week or so. I’ll be working in the Pactian District of Eastern Java which should take about 12 hours by bus to reach. Apparently the beaches there are beautiful and my site manager reports that we will make time for this!! Just for reference...


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Farmers are in essence small business owners. Behind all the details of our complicated project, the question we’re trying to answer is pretty basic: how can we provide a safety net in order to allow these business owners to take bigger risks in planning, so they’re planting more to get ahead rather than merely survive? This becomes particularly important as climate patterns continue to change, and in the case of my little farmers in East Java, the dry seasons grow even drier.

We spent week 1 in the office (my first full week in an office in almost a year and a half) researching more background on the districts and understanding the many existing weather insurance programs already in practice. It is highly amusing to me that *I* am one of the senior researchers on the staff… and that there are many other undergrads/grad students/staff in place to help make plans for me. It is an exciting challenge to actually infuse my own ideas into the project and offer recommendations that might for serious make a difference. It’s also been rewarding thus far that I’m actually applying lessons learned in the last year to practical use. Rare that this happens. I hope that will be the case in wherever I land next!