University’s Inclusion in Providing Climate Services to Farmers: Is It Possible Without Agricultural Agents and Farmer Facilitators?

Since the early 1970s, agricultural extension services in Indonesia have been developed based on the “Training and Visit” model to reach targets of increasing crop productivity. Until recently, extension services have been neither modified nor improved to accommodate farmers’ needs to respond to the consequences of climate change. Accordingly, farmers have been left to fend for themselves, often helpless to survive the impacts of increasing climate variability. Significant reductions in yields and harvest failures have been common in many parts of Indonesia. Two crucial dimensions have been missing in the existing extension approach, nurturance and trust. This paper examines recent agrometeorological improvements by farmers, through Science Field Shops (SFSs) provided by anthropologists and their students from Universitas Indonesia, in collaboration with agrometeorologists from the University of the Free State, and earlier from C. J. Stigter (Agromet Vision). Based on the lessons learned over the past decade, where agricultural extension practitioners provided climate services without “nurture and trust” built into the ongoing collaboration between scientists, students, farmers, and agricultural agents; the educational commitment did not yield effective results. The strategies and processes developed by the university’s interdisciplinary team show how those two dimensions were incorporated when SFSs were introduced in a new location, Sumedang Regency in West Java Province. SFSs included rainfall observers, scientists and students, as well as high-ranking local agricultural officials and farmer facilitators. They proved to be vital to the furtherance of farmers’ lifelong education and livelihoods.