Company-community partnership and climate change adaptation practices: the case of smallholders' coffee farmers in Lampung

Abstract

<p>Climate change affects agricultural production system and the livelihood of the smallholder producers. To help farmers increase their adaptive capacity, private sector may serve as an alternative to the government through company-community partnership, which aims to directly acquire production from the farmers while simultaneously increase their capacity through knowledge exchange, market access and social capital. Despite their pivotal roles, how the private sectors operate in promoting climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies to their smallholder clienteles are still understudied. This chapter examines the effects of company-community partnership upon the climate change adaptation and mitigation practices of the smallholders' coffee producers in Lampung, Indonesia. Using propensity score matching (PSM) and inverse probability weighting regression (IPWR), we found that farmers possessing motorized vehicle, larger farm size, and more active networks inside their locality, are more likely to join the partnership. Such partnership also positively affects the adaptive capacity of smallholder farmers in two ways. First, it improves their farm income thus reducing their income vulnerabilities; and second, through increased propensity to adopt resource-conserving and agroforestry techniques due to more opportunity for knowledge exchange and a higher degree of social capital. </p>