Farmers’ Perception of the Current Farming Practices on Agricultural Ecological Risk in Loes Watershed, Timor-Leste
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54536/ajec.v4i2.4681Keywords:
Conservation, Ecological-Risk, Farmer Perception, Local Customary, PolicyAbstract
Timor-Leste has been experiencing a decline in suitable land for agriculture over the years. Yet, slash-and-burn, shifting cultivation, and farmers steadily practice open grazing in the country. In the Loes watershed, slash and burn, shifting cultivation, and open grazing are expanded, although there have been stated in various studies that the practices seem to the stressors of the agricultural ecological risk to crop and livestock production failure. However, none of these studies explored the perception of farmers on agroecological risk that related to their farming practices. Therefore, the study aimed to determine farmers’ perception of the agricultural ecological risk related to farming practices in Loes watershed. A questionnaire survey was used to interview 243 household farmers out of 2,878 households in 10 villages. Three focus group discussions (FGD) were conducted in the municipalities of Bobonaro, Ermera, and Liquiça on the perception related to soil fertility, erosion, crop, and grassland production, conservation policies and laws awareness include its advantages to their life. The result of the study illustrated that 75% of interviewed farmers stated no risk to crop and livestock production related to soil fertility, erosion, and crop production failure. In addition, 82% mentioned not being aware of the conservation and agriculture-related policies and laws, however, 80% of them perceived customary law “Tara-Bandu” has a strong influence on their farming practices. Moreover, 36% were willing to be advised on conservation but 17% insisted to continue using their current practices. Only 20% acknowledged the advantages of agriculture and conservation-related policies and laws. Furthermore, adopting introduced conservation practices was very low ranging from 0.4% to 21.8% for various innovations and technologies. It concluded farmers perceived crop and livestock production decline are not caused by their poor practices, but instead considered as a natural process. In addition, policies and laws are considered new colonization by them due to their formulations ignoring their customary laws and traditional beliefs, thus perceiving low agroecological risk in the Loes watershed. Thus, this study recommends to promote the Sloping Agricultural Land Technology (SALT), Conservation Agriculture (CA) with no burn, minimum tillage, and integrating cover crops in farm management. In addition, integrating local wisdom into innovation promotion and agriculture-related policy formulations by promoting Customary Law (Tara-Bandu) which is the local community is the initiator of having rules and regulations to farm.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Delfim da Costa, Maria Victoria O. Espaldon, Decibel V. Faustino-Eslava, Patricia Ann J. Sanchez, Cristino L. Tiburan Jr.
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