Farmers’ Responses to Temperature and Rainfall Shocks in Indonesia

• In Event: Environmental Risks and Disasters: Considerations of Justice and Productivity

Abstract

In the tropics, climate variability poses greater risks to agro-ecosystems than global warming (Olonscheck et al., 2021; Vasseur et al., 2014). This paper examines how Indonesian farmers respond to temperature and rainfall shocks, defined as deviations from local seasonal means. Exploiting within-subdistrict variation over time, we find that both unusually high and low temperatures reduce rural household expenditure, while low rainfall does not. In response to these weather shocks, households draw down liquid assets and increase agricultural labor. Low rainfall shifts labor from non- agricultural sectors into agriculture, whereas temperature shocks raise agricultural work hours without reducing non-agricultural work. Farmers also adjust cultivated land area and crop mix. These results suggest that farmers intensify farming labor to mitigate weather-related losses, challenging the view that rural labor readily reallocates to non-agriculture during agricultural downturns. Overall, rural households remain more vulnerable to temperature fluctuations than to rainfall variability.

Author

• Xing Xia, National University of Singapore
  Presenting Author