Anthropology Teaming Up With Agrometeorology: Getting University Science to Assist Farmers With Climate Resilience

In third world countries like Indonesia, higher education is expected to contribute to the development of applied sciences that tackle pressing problems. Adaptation to and mitigation of climate change are such fields. Applied sciences work better in problem solving when approached in an interdisciplinary way. Winarto and Stigter have decades of experience in applied agricultural sciences but from different main fields: anthropology and physics/(micro)meteorology/(micro)climatology. They provide a welcome complementarity in their dialogue-based interactions with farmers on how climate change has necessitated livelihood/resilience changes for them. They developed and established climatological services for farmers, consisting of seven initial climate services for agriculture, bringing farmers closer to their ecosystems that are currently threatened by climate change. They established what they call “agrometeorological learning,” which is about changes of beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and goals of farmers due to new meteorological and climatologic knowledge they acquire, which considerably help increase farmers resiliencies.