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IFAD-supported farmer field schools use experiential learning and participatory group approaches to help farmers make decisions, solve problems and acquire new skills and techniques. Those who apply what they learn are reaping the benefits of higher yields. As farmers share their knowledge with neighbours, productivity and profits are growing.

Just a few years ago, Zeyana Ali Said struggled to earn a living from her small poultry farm. Profits from her birds were small. As a widow with seven children, she relied on her extended family to survive.

In 2008, Said joined a farmer field school in her community in rural Zanzibar and, for the first time, was able to learn how to farm.

“Since I joined this group, I am no longer dependant on my family,” she says. “Now I completely depend on myself. Before, I was getting about five or seven eggs from each hen. But now I get up to 25 eggs [per hen each month].”

Not only did Said learn to be a successful farmer, she also trained to become a farmer field school facilitator. Today she teaches others the importance of working together to find solutions to farming problems. She also provides them with information on HIV/AIDS prevention.

Empowerment through education

Zanzibar is a semi-autonomous part of the United Republic of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, 25-50 kilometres off the coast of the mainland, and consists of many small islands and two large ones, Unguja and Pemba.

Two IFAD-supported programmes are addressing the prevailing poverty in Zanzibar, where more than half of the 1.3 million inhabitants live on less than a dollar a day

Historically, Zanzibar was an important trade centre where commodities such as ivory and gold were traded on flourishing local and international markets. The local population benefited little from this trade because the key business players were foreigners. Still today, the majority of the island’s 1.3 million inhabitants are subsistence farmers, and more than half of them live on less than a dollar a day.

Farmer field schools provide young men and women with training in animal health care so they can offer private services to others in their communities

Since 2007, two IFAD-supported programmes have worked to address the prevailing poverty. The goals of the Agricultural Services Support Programme and the Agricultural Sector Development Programme – Livestock: Support for Pastoral and Agro-Pastoral Development are to reduce poverty, improve food security and increase incomes among communities that depend heavily on agriculture. The Zanzibar subprogramme of these two countrywide programmes is implemented under the government’s Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Zanzibar. It focuses on farmer empowerment through education.

“There was a great need for farmer field schools,” says Khalfan Saleh, assistant coordinator of the subprogramme. “The majority of our farmers, first of all, didn’t go to school. They had very little knowledge [of modern farming methods], and the practices they used on their farms were conventional. So there was a gap, and this gap was knowledge based.”

From 2007 to 2011, the subprogramme set up 720 farmer field schools in nine rural districts of Zanzibar. The schools are led and managed by smallholder farmers, who share new research and technologies and incorporate them into their farming activities. Each community decides what its specific needs are, and the subprogramme team then draws up a suitable curriculum, bringing together a group of farmers to study during an entire farming season.

Some schools provide training in cultivating bananas, paddy rice, cassava or vegetables, while others focus on livestock husbandry. Members of the farmers’ groups learn improved farming practices, provided by facilitators (professional agricultural extension officers) working with the subprogramme. Each group has 15-20 members, 62 per cent of whom are women.

Tamasha Saleh Haji is one of them, and she says the education she received at the farmer field school has opened her mind.

“To tell you the truth, I never dreamed I could be such a successful farmer,” she says. “Before I started the training I knew nothing about how to take care of a banana plant. But then I found out it was just like taking care of your child.”

Through hands-on training, Haji has learned to employ new farming technologies to increase the yields of her banana crop. She has become the main breadwinner in her family and can now pay her children’s school fees and support her husband’s dairy farm.

Producing impressive results

An annual supervision review and evaluation of the subprogramme, conducted in May and June of 2011 by the IFAD country office, shows solid increases in productivity in several areas.

Some rice farmers who use improved rice production techniques have increased their yields fivefold and made significant contributions to national seed reserves

For example, rice farmers employing improved rice production techniques have increased their yields from 1 ton to up to 5 tons per hectare. In 2011, 15 farmers’ groups produced 65 tons of high-quality rice seed, which they sold to the government, making a significant contribution to national seed reserves.

The evaluation team also observed that, in many cases, cassava yields grew from 9.5 to 17.6 tons per hectare, and banana yields increased from 9.5 to 15 tons per hectare. Average egg production increased from 60 to 150 eggs per bird per year. Milk production also rose from 3 to 10 litres per cow per day.

“More importantly, as a result of farmer-to-farmer exchange visits, participants are learning new skills and techniques from each other,” says John Gicharu, IFAD’s country programme manager for the United Republic of Tanzania. “Diversifying their activities will provide them with more opportunities to increase their incomes and help safeguard against market and weather fluctuations.”

Some groups and individuals have begun to produce milk products such as yogurt, butter, cultured milk and ghee. Others are seeking ways to add value to their cassava crops through processing.

The subprogramme has trained 52 village facilitators to vaccinate local chickens against Newcastle disease, which claims the lives of thousands of birds each year. It has also created self-employment opportunities for 90 young men and women – known as community animal health workers – by providing them with training in animal health services. The main objective of the training was to obtain a cadre of practitioners who can deliver primary animal health care. The graduates have been equipped with start-up kits and are ready to provide private services.

The subprogramme has also established well-equipped district resource centres, where farmers can share their views and seek assistance.

Empowering farmers to change their lives

The farmer field school approach was first developed in South-east Asia in the late 1980s for pest management. Unlike traditional approaches, which rely on extension workers providing top-down advice, field schools enable groups of farmers to find answers for themselves.

“That means farmers will develop solutions to their own problems,” says Gicharu. “They are more inclined to put into practice what they have learned themselves rather than if they are handed ready-made, but possibly inappropriate solutions. The field schools have helped farmers understand what their needs are and articulate them to extension staff and other public and private agricultural service providers.”

Although most participants never finished high school, a number of them, including Khamis Mkuburu Khatib, are conducting their own research.

“I feel very pleased to contribute my ideas and share my experiences with other researchers to help poor farmers from my country earn a higher income and to reduce poverty,” he says.

Meanwhile, the knowledge is spreading. When people see their neighbours’ success, they form their own farmer field schools. More than 40 self-initiated schools have sprung up, and former students, like Zeyana Ali Said, are trained to facilitate them.

“We will reach a stage whereby 70 to 80 per cent of farmers are producing surplus food,” says subprogramme assistant coordinator Khalfan. “And that’s when we’ll come out of poverty.”

 

Source: IFAD