Abstract

Abstract The viability of any farming system is highly dependent on its stability in the face of bio-climatological disturbances. This theme of stability, or rather instability, of upland farming systems has received little attention in literature on upland Java. Yet these systems have been affected by internal changes, wider social, political and demographic events and shifts in the nature of rural economies. Indeed, the depressed social and economic conditions, which have prevailed in an upland area in Java from the 1940s until about 1970, induced farmers to push their way of farming too near its limits and thus rendered them incapable of coping with a number of extreme climatological and biological events which occurred in the same period. This, more than anything else, led to the deterioration of the rural economy and thereby contributed to further degradation of the farming system. Favourable developments after 1970, however, have enabled the population to change its farming system and diversify/its economy in such a way as to better maintain the stability of the productive system.