Description of A Typical Farmer Field School
The Farmer Field School (FFS) is a group-based learning process. During the FFS, farmers carried out experiential learning activities that helped them understand the ecology of their rice fields. These activities involve simple experiments, regular field observations and group analysis. The knowledge gained from these activities enables participants to make their own locally specific decisions about crop management practices. This approach represents a radical departure from earlier agricultural extension programmes, in which farmers were expected to adopt generalized recommendations that had been formulated by specialists from outside the community.
The basic features of a typical rice IPM Farmer Field School are as follows:
- The IPM Field School is field based and lasts for a full cropping season.
- A rice FFS meets once a week with a total number of meetings that might range from at least 10 up to 16 meetings.
- The primary learning material at a Farmers Field School is the rice field.
- The Field School meeting place is close to the learning plots often in a farmer’s home and sometimes beneath a convenient tree.
- FFS educational methods are experiential, participatory, and learner centred.
- Each FFS meeting includes at least three activities: the agro-ecosystem analysis, a “special topic”, and a group dynamics activity.
- In every FFS, participants conduct a study comparing IPM with non-IPM treated plots.
- An FFS often includes several additional field studies depending on local field problems.
- Between 25 and 30 farmers participate in a FFS. Participants learn together in small groups of five to maximise participation.
- All FFSs include a Field Day in which farmers make presentations about IPM and the results of their studies.
- A pre- and post-test is conducted as part of every Field School for diagnostic purposes and for determining follow-up activities.
- The facilitators of FFS’s undergo intensive season-long residential training to prepare them for organising and conducting Field Schools.
- Preparation meetings precede an FFS to determine needs, recruit participants, and develop a learning contract.
- Final meetings of the FFS often include planning for follow-up activities.
Although Farmer Field Schools were designed to promote IPM, empowerment has an essential feature from the beginning. The curriculum of the FFS was built on the assumption that farmers could only implement IPM once they had acquired the ability to carry out their own analysis, make their own decisions and organise their own activities. The empowerment process, rather than the adoption of specific IPM techniques, is what produces many of the developmental benefits of the FFS
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