Smallholder Farm Households’ Vulnerability and Adaptation to Climate-induced Food Insecurity

Abstract

Smallholder farm households seem to have no alternative in addressing climate-induced food insecurity, but to adapt their livelihood systems to the changing climate condition. The study aimed to explore the link between climate-induced rice-insufficiency and vulnerability level of smallholder farm households, which determined their household-level adaptation responses, in Sumedang District, West Java Province, Indonesia. The Climate Change Impact, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (CCIAV) approach, developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was applied. The result suggested that under current climate condition, most smallholder farm households in the study area were already insufficient in their rice availability, as indicated by their low rice sufficiency level (HRSL). With no adaptation, climate condition was likely to worsen the smallholders’ rice sufficiency status, by shifting the currently rice-sufficient household to be rice-insufficient, or forced those who were already insufficient to be severely insufficient. Further analysis indicated a link between household rice sufficiency status and the composite household vulnerability level (HVI), where rice-severely-insufficient households typically had the highest composite-HVI (0.54), relative to rice-insufficient (0.46) and rice-sufficient households (0.39). Meanwhile, the application of the IPCC-vulnerability framework approach suggested a link between smallholders’ adaptation and vulnerability level. The adapted households typically had smaller overall IPCC-HVI than the non-adapted did, where the IPCC-HVI of the on-farm, off-farm, and the combined on-and off- adapted households was recorded, respectively at -0.11, -0.03, and -0.12, substantially lower than the non-adapted (+0.11). The study also recognized five major areas for adaptation-strengthening interventions in the study area, which involved in sequence according to its level of priority: (1) food condition, (2) irrigation, (3) livelihood, (4) knowledge, and (5) finance.