We started the fieldwork phase with an interdisciplinary workshop organised by the University UGM together with the Passau research team. This workshop marked the first workshop and stakeholder engagement of the DBU project on soil health. During the workshop, stakeholders from academia, NGOs and ministries engaged in active discussion about the potential of soil testing and digital extension.
Following the workshop, we started rolling out the training activities (intervention) for the organic farming project as well as info-sessions, training activities and a baseline survey for the soil health project.
Together with our Indonesian partner universities, we implemented training on organic farming in 30 villages and training on soil health management in 46 villages. In addition, we successfully interviewed around 1,100 smallholder farmers.
In our training activities, we introduced smallholder farmers to the soil test kit PUTS. This kit was developed by the Indonesian Soil Research Institute to help rice farmers conduct their own qualitative soil tests directly in the field.
Next steps:
In the organic farming project, we are planning to go back to the field to conduct the endline survey in February 2023. This will be the fourth wave of the panel survey. Based on the endline survey, we will then evaluate the impact of the training activities on, among others, knowledge, environmental awareness, adoption, conversion, yields and household welfare.
In the soil health project, funded by the DBU, we are planning to go back to the field to conduct the second survey wave in May 2023. In addition, we currently preparing a willingness to pay experiment for soil tests which we also plan to conduct during the next fieldwork phase.