This study aimed to determine the effect of the socio-economic factors on climate change adaptation strategy of white pepper farmers in Bangka-Belitung Province, Indonesia. West Bangka Regency was chosen as a research site because this area is one of the main white pepper growing-areas. Then, 70 samples of white pepper farmers were randomly selected. The cross-sectional primary data were collected through interviews directly with farmers in the research location using a list of questions in the questionnaire previously served by the researcher. The logit regression model was used to analyze factors influencing the farmers’ adaptation to climate change. This research suggested the following: 1) government programmes related to accelerating the implementation of climate change adaptation should be prioritized to female farmers and 2) knowledge and technical skills of extension agents at a local level, related to implementing climate change adaptation strategies, must be increased as well as materials regarding the implementation of climate change adaptation should be part of the agricultural extension syllabus for white pepper farmers.
El objetivo de este estudio es determinar el efecto de los factores socioeconómicos sobre la estrategia de adaptación al cambio climático entre los agricultores de pimienta blanca en la provincia de Bangka-Belitung, Indonesia. Se escogió West Bangka Regency como el sitio de investigación porque esta área es una de las principales áreas de producción de pimienta blanca. Luego se seleccionaron aleatoriamente 70 muestras de agricultores de pimienta blanca. Se recogieron datos primarios transversalmente a través de entrevistas hechas directamente con los agricultores en el sitio de investigación, usando una lista de preguntas en un cuestionario provisto por el investigador. Se usó el modelo de regresión logística para analizar los factores que influyen en la adaptación de los agricultores al cambio climático. Esta investigación sugirió lo siguiente: 1) los programas gubernamentales relacionados con acelerar la implementación de la adaptación al cambio climático deben ser priorizados para las mujeres agricultores; y 2) se deben aumentar el conocimiento y la destreza técnica del agente de extensión a nivel local, relacionados con la implementación de estrategias de adaptación al cambio climático y también los materiales sobre la implementación de la estrategia de adaptación al cambio climático deben ser parte de currículo de extensión agrícola para los agricultores de pimienta blanca.
Climate change phenomena have a dwindling effect on agricultural activities (
According to
Farmer’s behavior for climate change adaptation refers to how farmers are committed with acts for arranging or modifying their farming activities to minimize the disadvantage or to optimize the benefits of climate change (
Climate change adaptation research at the farm level will provide an understanding of specific adapted strategies to climate change and their impacts (
So, it is quite important to conduct the study on how white pepper farmers take adapted strategies to climate change. Understanding the factors that influence the behavior of climate change adaptation at the farming level is important not only for helping to formulate policies that can facilitate the adaptation process on a larger scale rather than in individual households or at the community level (
Adaptation to climate change at farm level according to
Although farmers are not familiar with the term or concept of behavior that refers to climate change adaptation, they can be said to adapt to climate change when taking actions that are categorized as anticipatory measures against climate change such as minimizing economic risks and agricultural business failures or conservation actions that prevent further deterioration due to adverse effects of climate change. Actions or activities such as changing varieties into varieties more suited to the climate they faced, diversifying farming and sources of income in anticipation of risks (
The adaptation to climate change includes the behaviors as proposed by
Based on activities of climate change adaptation strategies from several previous studies and having compared them to the farmer’s actions in the research location, I found five farmer activities that can be classified as the adapted strategy to climate change for white pepper farming. Those activities are classified as dependent variables in the logit model herein, i.e., farming diversification, mixed cropping, using farming residues as compost, building wells for water harvesting, and using organic fertilizer. The details of the factors or independent variables and their alleged effect on each dependent variable can be seen in
West Bangka Regency was chosen as a research site because this area is a producer of
The analytical tool used to analyze factors influencing adaptation of white pepper farmers to climate change is the logit regression model approach. The model is formulated as follows (
where:
Pi = the probability that farmer will make the choice of adaptation strategy to climate change
β₀ = intercept
βi = regression coefficient
Xi = the
Both sides of
If
Or could be represented as follow:
Because ln ezi = Zi, then
Farmer adaptation strategies to climate change are positioned as qualitative binary dependent variables where the value is 1 if the farmer implemented this strategy and 0 if he/she did not implemented it. In this study those variables were approximated from the probability (Pi) of the five adapted strategies as follows: 1) Farming diversification, 2) mixed cropping, 3) using farming residues as compost, 4) building wells for water harvesting and 5) using organic fertilizer.
The independent variables (Xi) in this study are age, gender of farmers, farming experience, white pepper price, household expenditure, total income of farmers from all his/her farming business, cooperative membership, farmer group membership, and other rural organization membership and educational status. However, there were additional considerations related to the econometrical reason for placing independent variables in the logit regression equation as follows:
Based on the cross-sectional primary data, the value of the white pepper price did not varied. Thus, the price of white pepper cannot be chosen as an independent variable in all logit model equations in this study. The farming experience and the farmer’s age showed a high correlation to the correlation coefficient of 0.6. Similarly, farm size and total revenue of farming have highly correlated to each other, where the coefficient correlation value is 0.99. Thus, the farming experience and farmer’age should not be in the same logit model equation because, as
The estimation results from the logit model regression equations can be seen in
are significant at 1, 5, 10, and 15 % probability level, respectively. senior high school and above and 0 = otherwise. member of farmer cooperative and 0 = otherwise. member of agricultural extension group and 0 = otherwise. member of other rural organization 0 = otherwise.
Diversification of farming is adopted to minimize losses due to the farming failure of certain types of cropping in anticipation to extreme climates. Factors affect the diversification of farming can be explained as follows: firstly, the farming total revenues have a statistically significant effect at α = 1 percent on the farming diversification, where the higher revenue from farming they have, the higher the probability to implement on-farm diversification. This evidence is the same as the finding by
Secondly, membership in agricultural extension groups has a statistically significant effect on farming diversification at the α = 10 percent. Positive coefficient value shows that farmers who participate in extension groups have a higher probability to apply farming diversification than those farmers who do not participate.
Mixed cropping is meant in this study as planting two or more cropping in the same area at the same time with white pepper as the main crop and the others as subsidiaries. This study found that as many as 78.57 percents of white pepper farmers cultivate mixed cropping in research location.
The logit model equation of mixed cropping (
Secondly, the experience has statistically a negative significant effect on the use of crop residues as compost at the level of α = 10 percent. The fact that all samples in this research cannot explain what climate change means and how to anticipate it, shows their limited information about climate change.
Building wells for water harvesting is a behavior or action that reflects the farmers’ adaptation to climate change (
The logit model equation of building wells for water harvesting (
The logit regression equation (
Secondly, membership in the cooperative has a significant effect on using the organic fertilizer at the level of α = 5 percent. The regression coefficient value of this binary qualitative dummy variable is negative, indicating that farmers who are not cooperative members have a higher probability in using organic fertilizer than those farmers who are members.
Thirdly, membership in the farmer group for extension has a significant effect on the use the organic fertilizer at the level of α = 10 percent. The coefficient value of this binary qualitative dummy variable is a positive indication that farmers who are members of the group for an extension have a higher probability to use organic fertilizer than those farmers who are not members.
Fourthly, education is not a determinant of the use of organic fertilizers. The effect of this variable is not significant on the use of organic fertilizer. This means there is no difference in the probability of using organic fertilizer between farmers whose education is high school or above and farmers whose education is below the high school. So does experience, this independent variable is not a determinant that affects the use of organic fertilizer by farmers.
Female farmers are adopting climate change adaptation strategies much more than male ones. Thus, government programmes related to accelerating the understanding and implementation of climate change adaptation in white pepper farming should be prioritized to the female farmers as the main target.
Farmer group for extension affected only the farming diversification as an adapted strategy to climate change and has no effect on other adaptation strategies. Farmers’ membership in cooperative and other village organization has not contributed to adopt any adaptation strategy to climate change. This phenomenon showed the limited contribution of agricultural extension groups and other farmers’ organizations in providing insights and improving skills and knowledge as related to climate change adaptation in white pepper farming. Therefore, knowledge and technical skills of extension agent at a local level, related to implementing adapted strategies of climate change, must be increased and materials regarding the implementation of climate change adaptation should be part of the agricultural extension syllabus for white pepper farmers.
I thank the Research and Community Service of the University of Bengkulu for their support to this research through the “Penelitian Mandiri” research scheme.
Research article