The Farmers’ Field School: A Community Self-Help Technique in Engaging Government
LGSPA has been partnering with, and developing the capacity of, the Kadtuntaya Foundation Inc. (KFI) for the past three years as part the Program’s efforts to strengthen the CSOs in ARMM that contribute to good governance, peace and development. KFI is an NGO that supports and promotes social, economic and community development with a particular focus on agricultural development and land rights for indigenous peoples. As part of the LGSPA supported initiative to strengthen KFI’s capacity to provide community organizing and agricultural extension services, the innovative “Farmers’ Field School” approach was introduced to a group of KFI trainers and farmer leaders. The Farmers Field School (FFS) approach represents a shift from agriculture extension, narrowly defined, to farmer education and community empowerment.
Rather than prescribing certain types of agricultural practices, the FFS approach encourages farmers to experiment. This process always begins with a group of farmers defining a field problem. A corresponding experiment in their own respective plots is then undertaken by the group. Divided into groups of 5-7 farmers, they take care of their experiments, monitor the results and share and analyze the results. The small groups discuss their field observations and then share the findings with a bigger group as a community output. Through FFS, farmers learn by doing. They gain a deeper understanding of ecology and cease to be passive recipients of technical advice from agricultural technicians. Farmers acquire the tools to actively learn from each other as applied scientists, relying on field data for the solutions to their challenges.
Thirteen KFI staff and 19 farmer-leaders attended the season-long trainers training program supported by LGSPA. As trainers, they underwent the FFS cycle themselves. They then applied it to the communities in which they work - barangays in the LGUs of Upi, Datu Odin Sinsuat, Talitay, Ampatuan, Talayan, and Datu Angal Midtimban. The trainers trained 130 farmer leaders from these 6 LGUs and engaged the Municipal Agricultural Officers whenever possible. The innovative approach helped the farmers to become partners of DAF-ARMM agriculture technicians, and as a team, they come up with solutions to their problems.
Beyond technology, they FFS participants learned to work together as a group. As a result they have formed a community organization and the social learning behavior acquired through the FFS experience allows them to provide “self-help” among themselves and other farmers. They have become pro-active in requesting the agricultural extension help that they need from their LGUs and able to work collaboratively on major agriculture development projects as well as to systematically address issues related to Land Tenure. In Upi for example, aside from addressing production-related problems, the farmer organizations are also working with the municipal government to tap the National Department of Agriculture to set up a PhP 30 million grain center / corn center in Upi.
The Farmers’ Field School: A Community Self-Help Technique in Engaging Government
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