As one of the most productive plantation producers in the world, Indonesia also faces rapid change in both social and environmental systems. These conditions are predicted to become more disruptive to the agricultural sector in the future. Therefore, understanding the impact of social and environmental disruption on smallholder plantations’ resilience is vital to formulate a strategy for the sustainability of farmers’ livelihoods in this country. Using survey data from 360 smallholding farmers in six villages from three districts in Bengkulu Province, Indonesia, the study deployed a multidimensional approach to assess smallholders’ resilience to social and environmental disruption as well as towards economic dynamics. There are four dimensions of smallholder resilience, namely, the ability of adaptation, recoverability, anticipation, and farmers’ innovation level. Social disruption was indicated by farmers’ demography, epidemic/family health, social conflict, culture clash, and intention on land conversion. Meanwhile, environmental disruption was shown by natural catastrophe incidents, climate variations, environmentally unfriendly cultivation activities, and land fires. Since the resilience level was classified as binary, bivariate probit model was used in the analysis. The result shows that smallholder plantations in Bengkulu Indonesia are categorized as innovative, and recoverable, but less adaptive, and less anticipatory farmers. Overall, more than 50% of smallholder plantations are classified as less resilient smallholders. The statistical result empirically uncovers that the intentions of land conversion, climate change, and environmentally unfriendly farming activities statistically have a significant contribution to the reduction of smallholder plantations’ resilience. Furthermore, the economic dynamisms such as lack of input availability, price volatility, demand uncertainty, and capital limitation have a significant negative impact on smallholder plantation resilience.
Indonesian smallholder oil palm plantations are facing both economic and ecological challenges, therefore the farmers struggle to be resilient. This study constructs two purposes, (1) to measure the resilience level of smallholder plantations, and (2) to assess the effect of economic and ecological disruption on smallholders’ resilience. We interviewed a sample of 120 smallholders in South Bengkulu regency, Bengkulu Province, Indonesia. The methodology deploys a quantitative method (statistics and econometrics) to analyze the effect of disruptive incidents on smallholders’ resilience. Resilience is indicated by farmers’ ability to adapt to changes, to recover from downturn business conditions or catastrophes, to anticipate risk, and to innovate new designs of farming activities. Resilience is categorized as less or more resilient (binary). The economic disruption is triggered by production, market, and investment circumstances. Meanwhile, ecological disruption is resulted from natural disasters, climate change, farmer’s treatment of the land, land fire, and government environmental policy. The result shows that more than 60% of smallholder oil palm plantations in Bengkulu Province are less resilient. Production uncertainty, bargaining position, climate change, and environmentally unfriendly farming behaviours increase the possibility of lowering smallholders’ resilience level.
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