Science Field Shops to Reduce Climate Vulnerabilities: An Inter- and Trans-Disciplinary Educational Commitment

One day in May 2010 a serious rainstorm occurred at a time when we used to have a dry planting season. The farmers asked, “Will the rains go on like this in the coming months, or will we have a normal dry season?” By referring to climate predictions from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Stigter replied that it appeared most likely the rains would cease but that predictions were still inherently imprecise for this part of the year. The rains then continued throughout the whole dry season, very unusual weather conditions reflecting the uncertain predictions. This uncertainty was a result of increasing climate variability due to climate change. Farmers were not the only people astonished by the unusual weather conditions. Scientists were simply wrong in their predictions for Indonesia, three months in a row (Stigter and Winarto 2011).

As Roncoli and colleagues (2003: 181) argue, the determining factors that shape people’s experience of climate phenomena as well as their understanding of climate information are “recollections of the past, observations of the present, and expectations of the future.” Based on our experience with farmers in several places in Java, we argue that farmers are facing these challenges not only due to ongoing climate change. Of additional concern is that international predictions are hardly reaching the farmers in any suitable form, while nationally selected predictions are issued without indications of their methodological soundness or uncertainty. In this situation farmers have great difficulties in developing strategies to cope with ever more severe and uncertain climate conditions.

In this article we argue that farmers need, first, to be collaboratively assisted by scholars and scientists, and second, to have interaction with and training from farmer facilitators or extension intermediaries. Only this way can rice farmers come to understand the implications of new weather and climate situations for local fields and crops and for the differing circumstances of surface irrigation, partial surface irrigation, and no irrigation (rain-fed or groundwater-fed fields). Our aim is to describe and analyze these matters in relation to farming; see Issues Evaluated later in this article for a sample listing of the kinds of matters arising.

The Science Field Shops Approach as Collaborative Work

Our earlier experiences showed that in addition to an always valuable inter-disciplinary approach in problem solving in agricultural production (e.g., Stigter 2010), a trans-disciplinary collaboration between farmers on the one hand and scholars and scientists on the other is beneficial for both parties as they reach across the voids between their very different realms and idioms. We have called the arena where farmers are stimulated to articulate and discuss their vulnerabilities in real dialogues with scholars a “Science Field Shop” (e.g., Stigter and Winarto 2012c). The farmers also evaluate and discuss their new field findings and have further dialogues to enrich their understanding and interpretations. Our aim with this bottom-up form of extension is enlarging farmers’ knowledge. In such a context, discussions should emerge regarding whether there is room for—and what would be the sense of—farmer research on the possibilities, choices, and options. Through such research, acceptable solutions might be found as long as these involve a continuing dialogue with scholars and scientists, in part to see what science has to offer in relation to the empirical answers sought or found by farmers (see Winarto et al. 2010a; Winarto et al. 2010b; Stigter and Winarto 2011; Winarto and Stigter 2011; Stigter and Winarto 2012a, 2012b). Scientists may follow this up, where necessary, with supportive research and teaching at their universities, research institutes, or weather and other environmental services institutions (Stigter and Winarto 2011). The learning of both farmers and scholars benefits from such a process. In the course of time, farmer facilitators are selected from among farmers, by themselves, to ensure continuity after the Science Field Shops conclude.

Early Attempts

The government of Indonesia, through the Ministry of Agriculture and Agency for Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics, introduced training for farmers in what were called “Climate Field Schools” (cfs...