Rain does not fall on one roof alone: Idir membership mediates risk perceptions on rainfall frequency and intensity in rural Ethiopia
23 Pages Posted: 4 Jan 2022 Last revised: 23 May 2023
Abstract
Perception on frequency and intensity of rainfalls is key to resilience in rainfed areas, even more so in the current changing climate. Farmers able to correctly interpret variance and extremes in short-term precipitations do retain a significant advantage. Membership into informal associations are known to foster the exchange of traditional and local knowledge. However, despite the communitarian nature of these rural societies, we know little about how the share of local knowledge influences risk perceptions on rainfall. In this study we combine socioeconomic and agronomic data with daily rainfall estimates to explore links between farmers’ rainfall risk and shared local knowledge over time. We build a panel dataset, interviewing 280 smallholder farmers in Ethiopia in 2013 and 2019, while characterizing the frequency and intensity of rainfalls in the crop growing seasons of this six-years window. By analyzing varietal and soil management choices, we identify a novel indirect measure of farmer’s rainfall risk perception. This measure shows high heterogeneity among neighboring households. Regressing the perception index on rainfall parameters, we find that changes in precipitation variance and maxima rarely explain changes in risk perception. The picture mutates when we interact changes in rainfall parameters and idir membership. We find that idir membership mediates risk perceptions, with members being able to better comprehend changes in rainfall distribution during the growing season. Idir members show also higher food security, in terms of calories and protein intake.
Keywords: rainfall risk perception, rainfall distribution, social learning, idir
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