A Series of Lectures By Mr. Allah Dad Khan Provincial Director IPM ( Master Trainer ToT) KPK Ministry of Food Agriculture and Livestock (MINFAL) Islamabad Pakistan

2. Farmer Field Schools
(Learning Objectives of FFS)
A Series of Lectures
By
Mr. Allah Dad Khan Provincial
Director IPM KPK MINFAL
Pakistan

3. FFS
From a farmer who has participated in an FFS
we expect that he has a good basic knowledge
of what is going on in his field. He knows his
crop, understands relationships between pests
and natural enemies, and has started to increase
his skills in crop and pest management. The FFS
curriculum therefore deals with many different
topics:

4. The plant
• Seedling health
• The crop
• The ecosystem
• Plant compensation
• Soil
• Collecting insects
• Insect identification
• Insect pest management
• Diseases

5. Disease management
• Weed management
• Pesticides
• Problems caused by pesticides
• Etc.

7. Broad Objectives
• To bring farmers together to carry out
collective and collaborative inquiry
• with the purpose of initiating community
action in solving community
• problems

8. Specific Objectives
• ¨ To empower farmers with the knowledge and skills to
make them
• experts in their own fields.
• ¨ To sharpen the farmers’ ability to make critical and
informed decisions
• that render their farming profitable and sustainable.
• ¨ To sensitise farmers in new ways of thinking and
problem solving.
• ¨ Help farmers learn how to organize themselves and
their communities.

9. • FFS also contribute to the following objectives:
• ¨ Shorten the time it takes to get research results from the stations
• to adoption in farmers’ fields by involving farmers’ experimentation
• early in the technology development process.
• ¨ Enhance the capacity of extension staff, working in collaboration
• with researchers, to serve as facilitators of farmers’ experiential
• learning. Rather than prescribing blanket recommendations that
• cover a wide geographic area but may not be relevant to all farms
• within it, the methods train extension workers and researchers to
• work with farmers in testing, assessing and adapting a variety of
• options within their specific local conditions.
• ¨ Increase the expertise of farmers to make informed decisions on
• what works best for them, based on their own observations of
• experimental plots in their Field schools and to explain their reasoning.
• No matter how good the researchers and extensions,
• recommendations must be tailored and adapted to local conditions,
• for which local expertise and involvement is required which only
• farmers themselves can supply

10. Establish coherent farmer groups that
facilitate the work of
• research and extension workers, providing the
demand of a demand
• driven system