The effects of dairy cattle ownership and farmers’ demography factors on the evacuation moving farmers’ behavior at Merapi volcano area (case study at Kaliadem Sub Village, Yogyakarta, Indonesia)

Abstract

A survey on 60 respondents taken by purposive random sampling was conducted to determine the effects of dairy cattle ownership and the farmers’ demography factors on the farmer’s decision whether to do evacuation moving or not, and to explore the feedback of the farmers around the Merapi volcano area relating with the operational planning expected by the farmers to face the
disaster of Merapi volcano activities. Logit model and descriptive analysis were used. The value of
2
McFadden (R ) was 0.25, meaning that 25.1 % of the variance of dependent variable (decision) was affected by the variance of independent variables (dairy ownership, land ownership, length of stay, age, education and location distance to evacuation lane) and 74.9% was affected by variables not included in the study. The only variable affecting the farmer’s decision whether to do evacuation moving or not was dairy cattle ownership. The negative coefficient of logit showed that farmers with higher dairy cattle ownership tended not to do evacuation moving. The farmers made three suggestions relating with the evacuation moving of their dairy cattle to face the disaster caused Merapi volcano activities, i. e. 1) the government builds animal housing in the area of evacuation with good conditions including proper structure of housing to give security, comfortable condition and enough water supply for the animals during the period of evacuation, 2) the government should grant the farmers with security and feed supply during the evacuation, and 3) the government temporarily buys the animals at the market price. The government was expected to give serious attention on the farmers suggestions for formulating the steps of strategy to anticipate the disaster of Merapi volcano activities, especially to minimize the human victim and to make the dairy farming sustains.