More thoughts from the field

I’ve spent the last week listening to the final round of surveys with the farmers in the tiny Pringkuku village of rural East Java. Most of my days were spent at the homes of various farmer groups across the village, which of course entailed a smorgasbord of lunches and snacks. More on my favorites in the next post, but first a few shots of what the average day looked like.




Note: all the men are chain smoking.



I finally started to get some consistent answers from the people I spoke with, maybe this means I’m getting closer to the truth? For example, it’s been a struggle just to figure out where the rainfall data comes from, what department/agency reports it where, and who has the longest/most accurate records. This in itself was no small task and may be the most important work I’m able to complete here.

In terms of consistent answers from the dozens of farmers we’ve spoken to, it is difficult to propose ONE solution that would help every single person. We meet people with highly varied struggles and levels of sophistication, from those who simply start planting when their neighbors do, to those who know the sound of every single insect and what that means for the rains, to those who report that the climate forecasts are accurate 80% of the time.

After many more questions, patterns started to become slightly clearer. It’s become incredibly apparent to me here how closely many people’s livelihoods are tied to rainfall. For example, in years when rainfall is low, late or unreasonably intermittent and crop production suffers, farmers report many different and equally upsetting coping strategies: they sell their livestock, take loans from various places, get second jobs. Most are too afraid to deviate (read: unwilling to task risks that might be more profitable) from their usual cropping patterns or using different varieties because they have zero savings should their experiments fail. These are some of the responses that I’ve read numerous times in reports or journals. However the message really resonates when you sit face to face with a friendly Indonesian father and he tells you that his biggest worry is just to be able to afford education costs for his children, which are constantly increasing. Or when a woman tells you that she doesn’t qualify for health insurance so she is always concerned about how she would pay for health coverage if her daughters ever have an accident.

These confessions of concern remind me not only how similar the worries of people are across the globe- but also how important it is to try to find solutions to these struggles. I think I have a few answers for helping cope with climate difficulties, and plan to work hard over the final weeks of my internship to articulate those ideas so that perhaps someone will listen.