inventory of farmer study group initiatives in africa - Share4Dev.info

Inventory of Farmer Study Group Initiatives in Africa – A Synthesis Report
Arnoud R. Braun
purpose but also in the methodology. Innovations here include community-based
selection of participants, “commercial plots” that enable participants to recover
(some of) the costs of running a school, farmer facilitators, spatially clustered
FFFs, and a range of community-based institutional developments that capitalize
on the self-confidence and leadership capacities created through the FFSs.
Quality. Farmer Field Schools are vulnerable to loss of quality (and thus impact)
in terms of (i) poor and inappropriate curriculum design, (ii) inadequate attention
to the quality of the learning process, and (iii) poor or inappropriate facilitation. A
crucial element in the implementation of FFS programmes is a training of
facilitators (ToF) course by experienced trainers 17 . Such a course is preferably
season-long, but as a consequence of decreasing budgets, such course are
reduced to short courses to a minimum of two weeks. Backstopping of FFS
programmes is often not carried out by such experienced MTs, which
consequently reduces the quality of the programme.
Costs. Study circles are relatively cheap in comparison to FFS, although no
usable data of study circles were available to make a comparison. In Africa FFS
are still largely criticized for being too expensive (as an extension method). If
FFS are considered an (non-formal adult) educational method, costs are
relatively low compared to traditional education systems. No comparative studies
of FFS and other approaches have been done in Africa. Moreover, if costs were
to be compared among approaches, a relation to the impact achieved –
economic, social, environmental and production – would be required.
Impact. Impact assessments of study circles in Africa have not been carried out
so far. Masendeke (2006) reports that study circles have generally considerably
increased yields, created powerful independent farmers, increased skills and
increased profits. FFS impact studies have only sparsely been done and reported
(Mureithi et al., 2005; Mwagi et al., 2003) and do not have a wide (geographical
and institutional) coverage for justified conclusions. Two studies are in process,
an ILRI study of a livestock FFS project in Kenya and an IFPRI study of FFS
programmes in East Africa. Despite the fact that impact is not quantitatively
proven at national level through research, the current rush to support FFS and
study circles is based more on direct field observation 18 .
Sustainability. A concern is the sustainability of FFS and study circle impacts.
There is insufficient long time series data to assess this definitively but the weight
of the global evidence so far suggests a potential for significant longer-term
impact. Within the FFS approach in Africa this appears to be achieved principally
through the institutional innovations FFS alumni are able to set in place – for
instance the FFS networks in Western Kenya (Gustafson, 2004; Khisa and
17 All experienced trainers, also called “Master Trainers”, should have followed at least a seasonlong
training
18 Organisations that have taken up FFS mention that the starting point for them to take up the
approach was the “word of mouth” going on at local level i.e. farmers and field staff seeing FFS
projects and putting pressure on their local coordinators to include FFS and then this demand
transmitting to higher levels.
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