Julie Ingram has recently returned to Indramayu on Java and Lombok to visit farmers participating in Science Field Shops (SFS) as well as extension officers, NGOs and local officials.Together with her hosts the University of Indonesia, she will be reviewing farmer-led compost experiments and discussing digitisation of their rainfall data in Indramayu, and exploring the potential for upscaling the SFS in Lombok.
Science Field Shops (SFS) are an extension approach in regions in Indonesia to help farmers to adapt to climate change. SFS are equipping smallholder farmers to undertake their own rainfall and agroecosystem measurements, observations and on-farm experiments, and supporting them with seasonal rainfall scenarios. Together these enable farmers to adapt to, and build resilience for climate change.
Julie said that “it’s great to be back and meet these enthusiastic and committed farmers again and see how they share their rainfall and agroecosystem observations at monthly meetings”.
Whilst in Indonesia, Julie also attended the 5th Global Science Conference on Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) which aims to mobilize the global CSA community to deliver the transformation required in the agricultural sector. As part of Theme 2 Digitally enabled climate-informed services, Julie presented some observations from her OECD Research Fellowship in Australia and Indonesia. The presentation, Contrasting approaches to developing digital tools for enabling climate adaptation, explored whether digital tools can enable farmers to enhance their learning as well as their adaptive capacity.
Read more of Julie’s research on the University of Gloucestershire’s research repository.
