Farmer field schools are emerging as the cheapest and quickest way of disseminating information to farmers with studies indicating an increase in yields, and improved farming techniques by more farmers through these schools.

Farmer field schools (FFSs) are a popular education and extension approach worldwide, now in place in at least 78 countries. Started in Indonesia in 1989, FFSs have expanded through many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa.

Kenya alone is the site of more than 5,000 such schools with over 50,000 farmer graduates. Such schools use experiential learning and a group approach to facilitate farmers in making decisions, solving problems, and learning new techniques.
On a Wednesday morning, Josphine Mutindi, a smallholder farmer in Mbondoni village of Mbeere South in Embu County is busy sorting tomatoes in sizes as required by the market despite her physical disability – thanks to the new village based education that has empowered her.

The entire Mbeere area is dry!. But 25 smallholder farmers from the area, living with different forms of disability have turned part of it into a green haven, harvesting tons of horticultural produce despite the tough climatic conditions.
“Our success is a result of a knowledge exchange programme, which has really transformed our lives,” says Mutindi, a member of Mbondoni Disabled Farmers Field School. The group is just one of several others in these areas that has formed similar groups, and are already producing enough to feed their families and generate income.

Mutindi said that by exchanging knowledge with other dry-land farmers through weekly forums, many people have been able to develop resilience to the prevailing climatic conditions, which she says has changed drastically from what it was some 20 years ago.

“I grew up in this area. And when I was still a teenager, my parents could predict a particular week when it was going to rain. And with that, we could even plant in advance before it rained,” she says. But today, she says that dry seasons have become longer than usual, and whenever it rains, it floods the entire area unlike what happened before.

It was due to such unpredictable variations of climatic conditions that ActionAid International Kenya with support from Australian Aid (AusAid) implemented the concept of Farmer Field Schools to enable farmers to share indigenous knowledge of dry-land farming and crop management.

“For this concept to work, we first identify groups of people with a common interest who are willing to get together on a regular basis to study the ‘how and why’ of a particular topic,” says Philip Kilonzo, the livelihoods technical adviser with ActionAid Kenya International.

During such meetings, topics covered can vary considerably from pest management, organic farming, animal husbandry, and plant and soil health, to income generating activities such as agri-business among others. However, Says Kilonzo, the FFSs are usually adapted to field studies, where specific hands-on management skills and conceptual understanding (based on non-formal adult education principles) is required. as well introduced a similar concept to school going children especially in Kenya’s arid and semi-arid land areas. “Since agriculture is no longer and examinable subject in our primary schools, we have introduced Junior Farmer Field Schools (JFFSs) through school based clubs as part of extra-curriculum activities,” said the livelihoods technical adviser.

Kamunyagia Primary School is one of ten institutions in Mbeere South region where teachers help pupils to gather some agricultural skills alongside their usual lessons.

Pupils in this school have formed a membership club for junior farmers. Despite the scorching drought in the area, the club’s one hectare of land donated to them by the school is full of succulent green crops including more than 300 mango trees, 200 pawpaw trees, cassava plants and 30 vegetables patches, one for each member of the club.

“This is not part of their normal curriculum. We are only equipping them with survival skills since agriculture is not an examinable subject,” said Newton Gitonga, the club’s patron and a science teacher at the school.
Kilonzo further explains that the field schools are not a replacement for formal education, or meant to take children out of schools, and is not a way to promote subsistence agriculture as the only livelihood option for the children. “It is meant to encourage and support livelihood diversification for better food security for a sustainable future,” he said.

During these lessons, the students are taught about poultry husbandry, rabbit keeping, simple techniques of soil moisture conservation as an important component of dry-land farming, horticultural practices, pests and plant disease management among other lessons depending on the interests.

“All our club members have replicated these lessons in their homes. I have a kitchen garden at home, where I use different techniques that I have learnt from school to grow vegetables, fruit trees and other crops,” said Purity Njigi, a class seven pupil at the school.

“The main aim of the farmer schools, both for pupils and adults, is to enable individuals to learn from each other, in order to improve food productivity and develop resilience to the changing climatic conditions,” said Kilonzo.
According to FAO the farmer field school learning technique has shown massive success by increasing food productivity in several countries in the world particularly in Asia.

Today, the 25 members Mbondoni Disabled Farmers Field School who largely depended on food aid some two years ago have become net producers of tomatoes, beans and vegetables sold to a number of towns including Embu, Makema, and sometimes Nairobi.

“From a half an acre of land, I earn not less than Sh40,000 per harvesting season which comes once in three months,” said Mutindi. She now comfortably pays school fees for her two sons in secondary schools.

 An ambitious ten year program that was set up in early 2000 at a tune of US$18.1m  to enable the over  42,000 households in arid and semi arid areas of Central Kenya cross the poverty line has surpassed the set target and benefitted more than 44,000 households.

Dubbed Central Kenya Dry Areas Small Holder and Community Services Development Project (CKDAP) with funding from the International Fund for Agricultural Development IFAD, Belgium Survival Fund BSF, Government of Kenya and the target community allowed for consultations with the farmers while introducing ways in which the farmers would sustain the project once the donors pulled out.

The project funded areas in agriculture that farmers were comfortable with including poultry farming, dairy goats, fodder conservation, tissue culture bananas among others in the target areas which include Nyandarua, Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Maragwa and Thika Districts. The project has been predominantly community development driven, based on designs that address poverty as a multi-dimensional phenomenon. Self-Help Groups and Community Based Organizations (CBOs) constituted the main interface between projects beneficiaries or stakeholders and the line ministries that form part of the service-delivery set-up.

The huge success of the program has attracted other players like the Institute of Development Studies of the University of Nairobi which is working on a book to be published soon, for the farmers to share their experiences learnt in the programme in addressing food security.

According to the IDS Researcher, Dr. Joseph Onjala, a write-shop was recently held at Thika’s Kenya Agricultural Research Institute offices where stakeholders and farmers brainstormed, and edited the material for publication. Mukurweni in the larger Nyeri District has been among the target area that has returned impressive results especially in the livestock, milk production, fodder conservation, pineapple farming and tissue culture farming where farmers expressed their interest in.

For example, a poultry project that sought to replace the over 800 indigenous birds which were susceptible to castle and fowl pox diseases with 732 hybrid birds of Kenbto, Sasso, and Brown eggers type has reduced the bird’s morality rate by 70 percent.

Every year the vaccination is carried out twice at the onset of the rains with the help of farmers who have been trained under the programme in all the target areas with an average of 8000 birds vaccinated per year since 2002. “I have even learnt to vaccine my birds in time, and they rarely get sick. I have always wanted to rear livestock and it was one failed attempt after another. If its not fowl pox killing my birds, its lack of feed for them. When the project was introduced and they came asking for what we wanted, I shouted rearing livestock. I still cannot believe I can have two consecutive years where I have never had any of my chicken dying, unless I slaughter them,” says Humphrey Mutiga a 25 year old beneficiary of the project.

According to programme coordinators, the vaccine programme had made a complete turn around in the productivity of the livestock. Before the vaccination programme was introduced, about 1 million birds used to die. The egg losses from the lost birds calculated at 20% of the total birds in laying stages is Kshs 170000per year.

Mukurweini is a banana growing zone but the area is constantly under always food shortage. The bananas traditionally grown in the area have returned poor output due to poor banana quality. In 2004 a group of farmers received samples of high yielding and early maturing bananas, the demand for more of these bananas from other farmers who joined the program led the program organizers to establish a hardening nursery for these tissue culture bananas. Farmers have also been linked to the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) for training and supply of the plantlets.
                                                                                                                                                             The value of bananas has risen from between 80-100kshs/bunch to 200-300kshs/bunch. This has prompted 200 adaptors with each having a plantation of 20 plants. With the hardening nursery in place the farmers bought 300 plantlets for 70kshs a plantlet and sold each plantlet for Ksh 100 after a month creating a revolving fund to buy more plantlets in future. In 2009 200 farmers adopted 20 plants each harvesting about 4000 bunches with an average value of Ksh250 per bunch translating into Ksh 1million kshs yearly. The tissue bananas project has also created food security in the community since they take shorter time to mature and have bigger bunches compared to the traditional ones.

Other hybrid crops that have introduced and have doubled farmer’s income include grafted mango that are encouraged for commercial markets. The group has been trained on value addition such as jam, juice making and mango flakes which will help in making more income, lowering the bulk to ease transport and preserving the fruits to be used for a longer period.
                                                                                                                                                             As the farmers gradually moved from production of food for subsistence use to commercial ventures, the project started targeting the resident’s umbrella bodies like self help groups and women groups by training them on financial management, auditing, collateral/security, credit management, and business planning of Income Generating Activities which was then followed by some follow-up visits on the ground including committee members and other members.                   

 For sustainability when donors pulled out, farmers have been trained by research institutions and linked to organizations who would supply them with plants and animal feeds at subsidized rates. For marketing they are linked to Africa Harvest, a leading not for profit organization credited with linking farmers with a ready market and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute for advice on modern farming.