Summary of Yearly Activities and Outputs

Year One

Convene an advisory and expert panel committee for interdisciplinary research:

Valdivia and Gilles (MU), Quiroz and Hijmans (CIP), Valdivia and Reinoso (CIRNMA), Lagos (Instituto Geofisico del Peru, weather forecasts), Jetté (UNDP), and a representative from SINSAAT (National System of Food Security and Early Warning System in Bolivia), and a representative from PROINPA will be the core members of this committee. Members from the National Agrarian University La Molina will be invited to participate in the second and third year. The purpose of this group is to review current instruments of data collection to capture more crop information, as well as indicators of knowledge on climate. The panel will also discuss integration of the approaches in social sciences, biological sciences and climate forecast feasibility in to the development of the models. The panel will assist with the diffusion of information to existing networks.

J. Gilles, C. Valdivia, C. Jetté and a member of PROINPA will conduct participatory rural appraisal meetings with farmers in the community to identify use of climate and weather information by farmers in San José Llanga building on preliminary studies conducted in 1995. Gather information on their perceived need of climate information and current coping mechanisms.

Prepare instruments for data collection with R. Espejo and field test in the first community to capture production year 1998-1999, as well as ask recall questions on El Niño 97-98 year; field test and apply a survey to 45 households (contingent on resources we could expand this to 45 farms in another location form which previous information exists). Identify strategies in 1998-1999 through cluster analysis, and evaluate the current degree of climatic risk in each group at CIP. Identify institutions, organization and networks at the household level for case study analysis in year two. The principal investigator will spend four weeks in Bolivia on the development of instruments, the participatory rural appraisal, and the field testing of the instruments. She will spend four weeks at the International Potato Center, working with R. Quiroz on the modeling of household strategies with the biological information. The co-investigator will set up the research questions for the study of networks and social capital. If resources allow, we will start identifying the second site in Peru on year one.

Year Two

Expert panel meets to review priorities for year in light of findings year 1, advise on the qualitative research in Bolivia, review instruments proposed for data collection in Peru. Assess initial household strategies in the second community with baseline information if an initial survey is conducted at the end of year 1 in Peru. Otherwise apply the household survey to the selected community in Peru identified in year one. Based on the crop choices, model yields based on potential forecasts of drought and frost in Peru and Bolivia. Develop case studies to identify and evaluate transactions costs, the role of social capital, current networks and sources of information on climate and weather; understand how these impact on decisions. We will study the groups of farmers and varieties of crops that may be chosen to improve performance in terms of productivity under stress (from on-going research conducted by CIRNMA and PROINPA) to reduce risk.

Process and evaluate the data with CIRNMA experts using the same cluster approach to identify groups households with similar strategies to determine the consistency of the framework. We expect a graduate student at the masters level from the Social Sciences Unit, MU to conduct field research in Bolivia on year two. We will apply to the Brown Fellowship for graduate international experiences provided by the College of Agriculture Food and Natural Resources (CAFNR), to cover travel and research costs. The co-investigator will spend at least three weeks in Bolivia on case studies to gather information about social capital and networks, in order to develop measurable indicators. He will spend one week in the second community, in Peru. The investigator will spend three weeks of field research in Peru in the identified community, and three weeks in Bolivia on the case studies, and two weeks at CIP on data analysis. At the end of the year, R. Quiroz will spend two weeks in the U.S. to evaluate the results of Peru=s questionnaire. Outputs from the Bolivia research will be completed at the end of year two regarding both the quantitative analysis of the strategies, as well as the qualitative study on factors that may enhance or facilitate use of climatic information in Bolivia.