Essays on Sustainable Agriculture in Indonesia

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to deepen our understanding of the sustainability of agriculture in Indonesia. The broad concept of 'sustainable agriculture' has raised many issues which have so far perhaps been insufficiently discussed in detail. This thesis focuses on farmer response and resilience in the face of risk and uncertainty by taking into account the role of women in agricultural households. Micro-data from longitudinal survey provide analyses using econometric models to provide the basis causality of empirical case studies: (i) Farmers' adaptations to agricultural drought; and (ii) the effect of family hardships on women's work attributes. The cross-sectional data from a combination the two large surveys are employed to explore the association between agricultural productivity and women's empowerment in rural agriculture (iii). The panel fixed-effect method captures the dynamic causality between the impacts of agricultural drought and farmer adaptation through the non-farm labour market. For analysing the adverse effects of family hardships on the extensive and intensive margin of women's work, the probit, the logit, and linear probability methods describe the causality between family difficulties and female participation in the labour market. Further, instrumental variables are proposed to attempt to discern whether the productiveness on food crops has any correlation with the condition of empowering women in rural agriculture. The main finding from exploring farming household labour reallocation in responses to agricultural drought as the main key of adaptation finds that farm households increase their non-farm activity and agricultural working hours in response to weather events. Exploring the mechanisms which support adaptation, agricultural extension programs and credit facilities assist farmers to remain in agricultural employment. At the household level, engaging in community programs is helpful, particularly for female farmers. The results suggest that these policies should seek to include both male and female farmers. The estimation results on the adverse effects of hardship distress on women's work suggest that negative effects on labour participation, working intensity, and primary wages of women labourers are relative to the severity of the hardship suffered. However, the study also finds that financial difficulties have affected income temporarily, none of the buffering mechanisms such as precautionary saving and social transfers, except unconditional cash transfers, could explain very well the variation of this effect in offsetting family hardships. As for the analysis of whether agricultural productivity can improve women's empowerment in rural Indonesia, the result reveal that agricultural productivity has little significant effect on empowering women in rural agriculture. The women's acceptance of violence against women is a notable source of their disempowerment. Subgroup analysis suggests government programs for improving farmer productivity have often ignored the involvement of women. In conclusion, the resilience of farmers and household member in the face of agricultural risks varies depending on their capacity to adapt. Generating income from non-farm activities and improving human capital for all farm household members are promising forms of resilience for farming families in coping with difficult situations and in seeking to achieve the sustainability of agricultural work.