IDB/MIF Project

Farmer Field School

Rosa Perez, advice a post-harvest specialist from Ecuador, illness delivers training in St. Thomas.

ACDI/VOCA - Improving production and marketing of selected specialty crops, treatment mainly cocoa.

USAID, through the Marketing and Agriculture for Jamaican Improved Competitiveness (MAJIC) project, is pioneering the expanded utilization of the Farmer Field School (FFS) extension and farmer training approach, in collaboration with the Rural Agricultural Development Authority (RADA). FFS involves a two step process which begins with the Training of Trainers (TOT) or facilitators, who in turn lead or facilitate the farmer training sessions.

Training takes place in the field, on the group members’ farms over an entire crop cycle. The entire cycle, delivered to a group of farmers, is collectively known as the ‘farmer field school’. The basic features of FFS are:

• The facilitators of FFS’s undergo intensive season-long residential training to prepare them for organizing and conducting field schools.
• Farmers become experts in their own fields.
• Each Field School is field based and lasts for a full cropping season
• The primary learning material at a FFS is the field.
• FFS educational methods are experiential, participatory, and learner centered.
• Each FFS meeting includes at least three activities: the agro-ecosystem analysis, a “special topic”, and a group dynamics activity.
• Between 25 and 30 farmers participate in a FFS. Participants learn together in small groups of five to maximize participation.
• Final meetings of the FFS include planning for follow-up activities.

Delivery of an FFS program varies with the target crop. Short season crops (horticulture crops) must consider the farmers’ need to tend to their own plots and are therefore more time-sensitive, while for tree crops such as cocoa there is more flexibility in delivery, since the trees are in the ground and cultural practices are relatively less time sensitive.

Farmers and extension agents both liked the FFS because:

• The practical, hands on method of learning enhanced retention of training content
• FFS provides an opportunity for the sharing of practical experience among group members
• Vibrant farmers group can emerge as a result of members working closely together over the life of the school