Living with an uncertain sky: farmer resilience, livelihood capital, and agricultural extension in Java’s rice bowl

This study examines how smallholder rice farmers in West Java, Indonesia, build resilience under climate pressure, and what part agricultural extension plays in that process. Using a mixed methods design in two contrasting regencies, Karawang (intensive farming) and Subang (semi-intensive farming), the research combined a survey of 371 farmers with in-depth interviews and observation involving farmers, extension agents, and government officials. Guided by climate change extension theory, resilience capacity theory, and the sustainable livelihoods approach, the study finds that the peri-urban, intensively farmed district is more vulnerable than the semi-intensive rural one, because intensification narrows the range of livelihood strategies available to households. Resilience capacities prove layered rather than parallel: stabilization and adaptation are present, but transformative capacity is almost absent. Extension, meanwhile, has been hollowed out by administrative work, and the plural actors present in these villages do not coordinate. What resilience exists is produced largely in social relations, within farmer groups. From the perspective of this study, resilience is systemic and relational rather than a personal attribute of the adapting individual, and extension is best reconceived as a mechanism that activates and connects local livelihood capital.