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Institutionalizing farmer field schools

Twigire Muhinzi National Extension System in Rwanda












Neza, B.N., Higiro, J., Mwangi, L.W. and Ochatum, N. 2021. Institutionalizing farmer field schools – Twigire Muhinzi National Extension System in Rwanda. Rome, FAO and IFPRI. 




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    The Farmer Field School (FFS) has been one of the most successful approaches developed and promoted by FAO over the past three decades, empowering farmers to become better decision makers in their own farming systems. Initiated by FAO in 1989, and subsequently adopted by many other organizations and institutions, the FFS programmes constitute one of the most important “results of the collective action of millions of small-scale farmers” that FAO has supported. FFS is an interactive and participatory learning by doing approach that offers farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolks, foresters and their communities a place where they can learn from each other,share experiences, co-create knowledge and try new ways of doing. Participants enhance their understanding of agro-ecosystems, resulting in production systems that are more resilient and optimize the use of available resources. FFS aims to improve farmers’ livelihoods and recognize their role as innovators and guardians of natural environments. FFS has attained plenty of outstanding achievements in all aspects of agriculture and rural development.
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    The main objective of this exercise has been to collect and analyze the experiences of Farmer field schools (FFS)/Agro-pastoralist field school (APFS) members, graduates, and practitioners in relation to gender equality, social inclusion, and individual and community empowerment, as well as changes to these as a result of participation in an FFS/APFS. Furthermore, the purpose of the initiative is to make farmers’ experiences more visible, and not only demonstrate the impact of FFS/APFS programs but also use these experiences in future implementations of the FFS/APFS approach. By identifying gaps in knowledge and opportunities, achievements and challenges, and best practices and lessons learned, this exercise aims to provide an insight into and deeper understanding of the FFSs’/APFSs’ gender and social dimensions. It offers the opportunity to reflect on this cross-cutting issue to allow these aspects to be better incorporated into the broader FFS/APFS discussion and its wider work. The exercise also identifies the needs of FFS/APFS facilitators in their work with issues of gender equality, social inclusion and community empowerment, and examines the relevance of related concepts and approaches and its modalities . A review of the existing work on strengthening gender equality and improving access for vulnerable groups within the context of FFS/APFS programs has also been conducted. The exercise’s main thematic areas of the exercise are gender equality and women’s empowerment, social inclusion and community empowerment, with additional areas including nutrition-related decision-making and sustainable agricultural production, and in some cases, access to and control over natural resources.
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    The ecosystem-literacy training employed in FFS is vital for enabling smallholder farmers to master the management skills required for sustainable crop production intensification and diversification. This is radically different from the approach used by more traditional extension systems which are designed for “technology-transfer” purposes. Agro Ecosystem Analysis (AESA) is the cornerstone of the field school approach and is based on the ecosystem concept, in which each element at the crop/farm/field has its own, unique role. It involves crops or commodity observations, data collection, analysis, interpretations or discussions, and recommendations. Farmers use AESA method to understand the situation of crop ecosystem in the FFS approach. However, the method still included a reasonable level of complexity where the farmer has to deal with numeric and textual data. This remained a challenge for the facilitator to communicate with the farming community, who cannot easily write and read the observations and perform analysis on a paper sheet and also in the presentation of the same AESA sheet. The New AESA Board is devised to mitigate the challenge of illiteracy and some other challenges in participatory group learning including the difference of age, education level, gender equality, wealth position, social activism in the field school. The pre-designed AESA board provides equal opportunity to all participants including literate, illiterate or poor literacy services. This AESA board along with analytical color language named Jam's 4 Colors by FAO Pakistan remains among the top innovations of 2020.

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