Climate Exchange

[

] 33

griculture

the final stage is to transform and transfer capacity and capability

obtained in the second stage directly to farmer households.

The execution of CFS needs strong collaboration between part-

ners and in our experience, the extension workers from MoA serve

as ideal facilitators to interpret BMKG’s climate information. The

role of universities such as Bogor Agriculture Institute is also very

important, especially to formulate the concept of the CFS. Funding

support from our Government and other sources, such as Ausaid

and the United Nations Development Programme, is needed to

ensure the continuation of the activities.

Technical aid programme

Support for a CFS project has been provided by AusAID of the

Australian Government through a technical aid programme.

The programme was conducted in two districts: West Lombok

regency in West Nusa Tenggara (NTB) and Kupang regency in

East NusaTenggara Timur (NTT).

In the first stage, there were 20 participants, up to six of whom were

selected to give training to 20 extension workers in the second stage,

when BMKG was also directly involved in facilitating the transforma-

tion process. In the third stage, a similar number of extension workers

from stage two were selected to become facilitators, with whom farmers

could directly communicate in their own language. At all stages, BMKG

staff were also involved as trainers and cooperated closely with the

extension workers.

The crucial aspect of the CFS process lies in the third

stage, during which information provided by extension

workers is delivered to the farmers. While the dura-

tion of phases one and two is four days, in phase three

it is four months – one planting season. The CFS in

NTB and NTT mainly served as an example of how the

extension workers could proactively induce and affect

the decisions taken in the planting phase by referring to

climate information. In the latter case, it was expected

that one extension worker would help and involve 15

to 20 farmer group leaders.

Lessons learned

Developing an effective method for communicating

climate forecast information to end users such as farmers

is really very important. The involvement of intermediar-

ies such as agricultural field officers/extension workers

in the process may significantly change the perception of

farmers regarding climate information for their support.

The ‘learning by doing’ process serves as an effective

process for transferring climate knowledge or climate

information to farmers.

Farmers need to be introduced to climate issues

through experimental examples with simple explanation

and tools, active discussion and opinion sharing, finally

Source: BMKG Indonesia

Climate information flow chart