Land-use change and socioeconomic development in rural Indonesia: Oil palm, rubber, and smallholder resilience

Through the C07 group, three rounds of farm survey data from Jambi are already available (2012, 2015, 2018). A fourth round is planned for 2021/22. The four rounds of farm household data will allow us to develop and estimate panel data models of oil palm adoption and replanting, using a broad set of household, regional, and institutional characteristics as explanatory variables. Taking more rounds of data into account, the existing studies can be expanded by using more advanced geospatial statistical methods and therefore arrive at results with higher statistical robustness.

Throughout my PhD, I plan to produce three research papers. The first research question I will be working on is

• How has the Covid-19 crisis affected livelihoods and livelihood activities of oil palm and rubber smallholders in rural Indonesia?

To answer this question, I am pursuing a rapid assessment of Covid-19 impacts on smallholder livelihoods and livelihood activities in four areas in Jambi province, Indonesia. For this purpose, we are running a shortened survey in mid-2021 with a subset of farmer and laborer households. So far, it seems that freedom of movement for most smallholders was not heavily affected and the world market price for both rubber and palm oil increased instead of decreased since the first outbreak of Covid-19. Thus, the central hypothesis is that most households are not much affected by Covid-19, at least not through their main livelihood activities, namely oil palm and rubber production.

Relating to that, a second hypothesis is that Covid-19 affects households through its effects on off-farm employment activities and local markets. As of July 2021, Indonesia is one of the Corona Hotspots in Asia and accordingly, an evaluation of the impact of the crisis on the rural population is of great importance. Additionally, the findings from this analysis will particularly be interesting against the background of two external shocks, namely the 2015 El Niño effect and the aforementioned Covid-19 pandemic. The analysis will contribute to the growing body of literature on Covid-19 effects by analyzing the medium-term effects of the crisis more than one year after the first outbreak. Additionally, an interesting contribution can be made thanks to the panel structure of the data, which might show a discontinuity of relevant outcome variables.

Before starting my PhD in C07, I completed my master studies in the C01 group.