Local Wisdom-Based Food Security in Facing the Climate Crisis in Indonesia

The climate crisis has become an essential agenda for global society, including Indonesia. Climate change causes floods, droughts, and plant diseases, which result in crop failure. This chapter will describe food security in the climate crisis based on local knowledge. This local wisdom is in the form of the Indonesian tradition of storing rice harvests in barns to deal with crises. A qualitative approach was used in this research. The primary data was obtained through interviews and observations. The informants interviewed were taken purposively as many as 15 people representing three areas affected by climate change in the form of floods, drought pests, and diseases. Interviews were also conducted with officials at the Ministry of Agriculture to obtain information regarding handling climate change in the agricultural sector. The research results show that climate change in Indonesia has resulted in droughts, floods, and increased plant pests, resulting in crop failures. The area of rice crops that failed to harvest due to climate change from 2014 to 2019 was 1.5 million ha. This resulted in the loss of 6 million tons of milled dry unhulled grain, or the equivalent of 750 thousand tons of rice. The government’s efforts to protect farmers from crises are based on local wisdom, namely by providing insurance for rice farmers, such as the rice barn principle. What is new in this chapter is the development of an insurance program for farmers based on local wisdom values.