Approach and procedure of Farmer Field School methodology

The FFS approach was developed by an FAO project in South East Asia as a way for small-scale rice farmers to investigate, and learn, for themselves the skills required for, and benefits to be obtained from, adopting on practices in their paddy fields. The term “Farmers’ Field School” comes from the Indonesian Sekolah Lampangan meaning simply “field school”. The first Field Schools were established in 1989 in Central Java during the pilot phase of the FAO-assisted National IPM Programme. This Programme was prompted by the devastating insecticide-induced outbreaks of brown plant hoppers (Nilaparvata lugens) that are estimated to have in 1986 destroyed 20,000 hectares of rice in Java alone. The Government of Indonesia’s response was to launch an emergency training project aimed at providing 120,000 farmers with field training in IPM, focused mainly on recording on reducing the application of the pesticides that were destroying the natural insect predators of the brown plant hopper. The technicalities of rice IPM were refined in 1986 and 1987 and a core curriculum for, training farmers was developed in 1988 when the National IPM Programme was launched. It was based not on instructing farmers what to do but on empowering them through education to handle there own on-farm decisions, using experiential learning techniques developed for non-formal adult education purposes. Since then, the approach has been replicated in a variety of settings beyond IPM. The FARM Programme (FAO/UNDP), for example, has sought to adapt the FFS approach to tackle problems related to integrated Soil Fertility Management in the Philippines, Vietnam and China. The themes studied by farmers’ groups include soil mapping of village lands, physical and chemical analysis soils, fertilizer application and the influence of cropping practices on fertility. With the knowledge thus gained, farmers can more easily recognize differences in soils and take better informed decisions on the use of organic and inorganic fertilizers, alternative tillage systems and cropping practices so as to improve the conservation and management of soil productivity. Subsequently the FFS approach has been extended to several countries in Africa and Latin American. At the same time there has been a shift from IPM for rice based systems towards other annual crops, vegetables etc and the curriculum has been enriched with other crop management aspects. Full Document