Agronomic and social strategies on food crop production for climate change adaptation at Palu Valley, Central Sulawesi, Indonesia

Abstract

Climate change has become a threat to the agricultural sector, especially at the farmer level. Adaptation to climate change is now gaining wide attention; however, farmers still have the low adaptive capacity and do not have the essential technology for adaptation to climate change. Such adaptation to climate change is necessary to reduce the risk of losses in the agriculture sector. The study aims to know the perception and adaptation strategies to climate change on farmer level especially in food crop production, then correlated it with government recommendation strategies. A survey had been conducted to farmers in Palu Valley, Central Sulawesi, and a descriptive analysis approach is employed in this research. The findings show that there are challenging issues such as the socialization of meteorological information, a planting calendar application, the dissemination of essential technologies for climate change, and also social aspects such as insurance and indigenous knowledge. A number of recommendations were proposed to ensure the more efficient and beneficial use of technology recommendations in coping with climate change in food crop production. 1) Improving farmer's knowledge by spreading climate change technologies dissemination. 2) Providing user-oriented features to increase farmer awareness and responses. 3) Enabling different institutions and stakeholders for programs cooperation in coping with climate change challenges.