It is a very good case to show having an institution at the village level helps to sustain it. Farmer field school approach is given by pontius et al. School does not mean the primary or middle like school in our country, but it. Farmer field school guidance document food and agriculture.
We employ a series of evaluation methodologies, including a quasidifferenceindifference setup, to account for potential selection into the project, despite lack of baseline. In recent years, a number of development agencies, including the world bank, have promoted ffs as a more effective approach to extend sciencebased knowledge and practices to farmers. The farmers field school ffs approach emerged out of a concrete, immediate problem. The participants identify which ptd activities will be set up. The farmer field school approach is a form of extension service that is being implemented worldwide to address the farmers need to define their priorities. Farmer field schools as a transformative learning space in.
Field schools ffs is a groupbased adult learning approach that teaches farmers how to experiment and solve problems independently. Impact of soil and crop management farmer field schools on. Farmer field school ffs is a capacity building approach, which provides opportunities to farmers of improving various skills through practicing various techniques by themselves. An assessment of the factors that impact the level of. Springghana developed this farmer field school ffs curriculum to improve farming practices and increase aflatoxinsafe groundnut crops for better household nutrition. The training process is always learner centered, participatory and relying on an experiential learning approach. This approach is an intuitive and commonsense strategy for training, and empowers farmers to be their own particular experts on significant parts of restricted cultivating systems. They can contaminate crops such as groundnuts, maize, millet, sorghum, and rice.
The farmer field school project growing sustainable tea in. The implementation of projects using the ffs approach led to a deeper understanding of. Therefore, the second step in the ipm approach should be the training of farmers by building on socalled farmer field schools where farmers learn to apply, adapt and improve the new control technologies. Aflatoxins are toxic substances produced by certain moulds found in food crops and are predominant in warm and humid places, but also in very hot climates. Constraints as well as factors for enhancing its performance were studied. The primary learning material at a ffs is the field of a crop. This training handbook, published by the fao, is a field guide for training urban and periurban vegetable farmers in safe practices when using wastewater in vegetable production.
Pdf the farmer field school approach history, global. Fao launches new training handbook for farmer field. Farmer field school ffs is a capacity building approach in the agricultural extension approaches aea, which provides opportunities to farmers of improving various skills through practicing various techniques by themselves. Nevertheless, aside from its achievements, as an approach it was not fully effectual for farmers. It was originally developed for the ghana ministry of food and agricultures agricultural extension agents to work with groundnut farmers in northern ghana supported by spring. Since the development of the farmer field school ffs approach in the late 80s in asia, thousands of ffs have since been implemented across the world, in over 90 countries and across a varied range of contexts and thematic areas. The approach was found to be an effective tool for farmers to learn in groups through their. Technical manual farmer field school approach weadapt. Farmer field schools in response to todays farming challenge. The farmer field school is still one of the most implemented forms of extension service worldwide. The farmer field school ffs approach was developed by fao and partners nearly 25 years ago in southeast asia as an alternative to the prevailing topdown extension method of the green revolution, which failed to work in situations where more complex and counterintuitive problems existed, such as pesticideinduced pest outbreaks. Cocoa ffss have been introduced in ghana by the ministry of food. The objective of the field schools is to give farmers an opportunity to. Farmer field school stakeholders forum the farmer field school ffs is an innovative, participatory and interactive learning approach which was developed with assistance from fao in the 1980s in south east asia as a way for.
The global environment facility project on which i am working endorses the farmerfieldschool approach to train farmers in how to adapt to climate change. Prospects of farmer field school extension approach in. This will lead to people oriented and sustainable agriculture. The farmers field and business schools are a product of the care pathways program, and focus on a learning by doing approach, putting farmers at the heart of learning and decisionmaking around new agricultural techniques. In a typical ffs a group of 2025 farmers meets once a week in. This approach was based on the principles of growing a healthy crop, preventing predators. The potential of farmer field school ffs as an extension approach in africa is still evolving, with limited empirical evidence. An evaluation of the ffs approach in zimbabwe was done using. Prospects of farmer field school extension approach in enugu state dimelu, m. The main target of integrated crop management farmer field school icmffs development is to boost rice production in order to accelerate the achievement of sustainable rice selfsufficient in indonesia.
Farmer field school is field based learning and lasts for a full cropping season. The farmer field school is a season long, nonformal training program for selected farmers within a locality, usually a village. A farmer field school ffs is a groupbased learning process that has been used by a number of governments, ngos, and international agencies to promote integrated pest management ipm. Its popularity can be attributed to its effectiveness as an alternative learning experience as its different techniques, such as ecosystem analysis. Farmer field school approach integrated production and. Sometimes called schools without walls, in ffs groups of farmers meet regularly with a facilitator, observe, talk, ask questions, and learn together. Pdf the farmer field school ffs concept grew as a result of. At the end of the 80s of the last century farmers in indonesia were putting their crops, their health and their environment at severe risk through massive abuse of highly toxic pesticides promoted aggressively by the private industry and government.
Farmer field schools as an approach was first developed. Farmer field schools ffs consist of groups of farmers who get together to study a particular topic. An analysis of the effectiveness farmer field school ffs. In february 2017, ardri, in partnership with the land project, established a farmer field school home gardening study group in kumanzimdaka village, about 40 km from elliot in the eastern cape. Pdf the farmer field school approach zandie bonagua. Farmer field schools ffs and local agricultural research committees cials are participatory platforms for improving decisionmaking capacity and stimulating local innovation for sustainable agriculture. But the king changed, ffs disappeared, and farmers went back to pesticides. The purpose of the study group was to facilitate agricultural knowledge sharing, to promote best practices for sustainable and ecological production, and to. The broad problem which these field schools were designed to address was a lack of knowledge among asian farmers relating to agroecology, particularly the relationship between insect pests and beneficial insects.
We estimate the impact of a farmer field school intervention among smallscale farmers in northern tanzania on two main development objectives. Malaria has strong linkages with agriculture, and farmers in malarious regions have a central position in creating or controlling the conditions that favour disease transmission. The farmer field school approach history, global assessment and success stories by arnoud braun and deborah duveskog unedited draft paper. A farmerfieldschool approach to ensure adaptation to. Plan and design ptd activities after prioritizing field problems, the planning and designing of ptd activities commence. The farmer field school approach history, global assessment and success stories. Recent research on the farmer field school ffs approach in agriculture in developing countries has raised some doubts on the economic impacts of this. Data were documented, coded and analyzed using atlas. This approach is a waste of time and money in many areas where it is implemented. This approach mainly aims at empowering the farmers through completing various tasks by themselves.
The farm field school ffs methodology originally developed by fao in asia for integrated pest management on rice was subsequently broadened to address other crops and topics matteson et al. Demand for ffs programmes is increasing, and in several countries. The basis of ffs is a group of farmers with a common interest who together engage in a seasonlong study program with weekly meetings. The concept of farmer field schools ffs, a participatory approach. It is an outdoor school where learning and sharing takes place through handson practical training. Since the development of the farmer field school ffs approach in the late 80s in asia, thousands. Ffs is a seasonlong training activity that takes place in the field.
This paper reports investigation on the effectiveness of ffs in. Pdf the farmer field school as an agricultural innovation. Since then, more than two million farmers across asia have participated in this type of learning. Another exceedingly fruitful augmentation and training methodology worldwide is the farmer field schools ffs approach braun et al. We use both regression analysis controlling for participation and a propensity score matching approach to create a comparison group similar to the ffs participants in observable characteristics. Extension agents, researchers and external participants acted as facilitators rather than as traditional teachers. The farmer field school is a seasonlong training of farmers involving participatory activities. The topics covered can vary from conservation agriculture. Experiential learning in farmer field schools in rice creates opportunities for the integration of aquaculture the approach to reach and enhance human expertise for better rice crop management, particularly in relation to integrated pest management ipm, is via farmer field schools ffs with about 25. Farmer field school ffs manual food and agriculture.
Policymakers and donors were impressed with the results and the program rapidly expanded. The ffs approach is an innovative, participatory and interactive learning approach that emphasizes problem solving and. There actually the farmer field school approach has involved and it was great success 1 million acres in a span of 67 years. Approach and methodology farmer field school project the farmer field school project adopted a learnercentred approach, which meant farmers carried out handson observation, experimentation and evaluation.
Ffs offer communitybased, nonformal education to groups of 2025 farmers. Fao launches new training handbook for farmer field schools water, land and ecosystems. Farmers field school method of learning, technology development, and dissemination is based on adult learning principles such as experimental ffs introduced into subsaharan africa in the mid 1990s. An interdisciplinary and integrated approach is needed to involve farmers and more than one sector in control efforts. The farmer field school ffs has one of the most impressive track records in participatory community approaches, with 23 million farmers graduated on the agricultural subject of integrated pest management ipm during the past 15 years, mainly in asia, but more recently also in africa, the middle east and latin america. The study examined if there was any significant difference in means between the ffs participants and non ffs related to the set objectives in order to determine the impact of the ffs approach. Manual for training of extension workers and farmers on. The farmer field school ffs approach provided an empirical frame for the. Considering therefore, the importance of this approach, the study was conducted in. The ffs groups decide on their main topic of study and set up experiments at a fieldlearning site. Integrating nutrition in farmer field schools in eastern. The farmer field school approach history, global assessment and success stories by arnoud braun and deborah duveskog unedited draft paper commissioned by the international fund for agricultural development 3rd draft 6 october 2008 this document was created as a background paper for the ifad rural poverty report 2009. Farmer field schools as a transformative learning space in the rural african setting abstract the aims of this research was to understand how education in the rural african faming setting can contribute to development and wellbeing in a way that is empowering for the poor.
The field school trainer plays the role of a facilitator rather than an instructor. So far, working with ffbs has led to 6575% adoption of improved agricultural techniques among the 50,000 women who are part of the pathways program. Farmers field school approach sustainable agriculture. The programme leader should be a good leader who empowers others.
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