Farmer field schools training supporting livelihoods, protecting human and environmental health in Kenya
How Rose saved her family's maize crop.
Smallholder producers in Kenya and Ethiopia are being trained through farmer field schools (FFS) to combat fall armyworm (FAW) and mitigate the damage caused by the plant pest that is directly threatening livelihoods and food security across Africa and spreading around the world.
For Rose Muthoni, a maize farmer in Kenya’s Embu county, the FFS training has helped her to save her family’s maize crop, a significant livelihood source. During the season-long training, Rose learned approaches, including biological control, to manage the pest, which devastated her family’s crops in 2017 and 2018.
“FFS is truly a school without walls and for all ages,” said Rose, who worried she was not young enough to be trained in FAW management. “I never knew I would be able to learn at this age and put what I have learnt into practice and see the results,” she said after her graduation from the FFS programme.
“FFS has truly enabled me.”
Rose was part of one of 60 groups participating in a season-long FAW learning programme in Kenya and Ethiopia through FAO in Eastern Africa. She worked with others in her community, through the Mwimanthiri FAW FFS, to apply a group-learning approach towards the management and control of FAW. Their primary goal was to learn alternative methods for FAW control and management. That fit with the overall FAO project goal, which was to reduce FAW-related yield losses in maize through increased adoption of sustainable FAW management practices amongst vulnerable smallholder farmers.
Training included such key FAW management practices as push-pull methodology and the use of bio-pesticides and local botanical mixtures, particularly neem tree extract. FFS groups in Ethiopia used such botanicals as neem extracts, phytolacca, jatropha and latex from euphorbia species. In Kenya’s Bungoma district, FFS training groups applied tithonia, sisal, tobacco and pepper to fight FAW, while in Embu district, tithonia extract and Sodom apple extract were also used. Such training has helped farmers like Rose to avoid applying hazardous chemicals that could threaten the health of humans, livestock, and environmental health.
The FAO FFS project was implemented in Kenya and Ethiopia as a follow-up to the previous project phase in 2018. These countries were originally selected based on a combination of the significance of maize production, extent of FAW infestation rates, high level of vulnerability following consecutive seasons of drought and other disasters, and complementarity with other ongoing FAW actions.
The FFS training is particularly important here because agriculture is the mainstay of the Kenyan economy – it directly accounts for about 27 percent of annual GDP, and another 25 percent indirectly through the value chain. Maize is the most important staple food crop in Kenya and contributes significantly to food, nutrition and economic security. Similarly, maize is Ethiopia’s leading cereal, in terms of production and consumption. Over half of all Ethiopian farmers grow maize, mostly for subsistence with 75 percent of all maize produced being consumed by farming households. Yet fully 84 percent of Ethiopia’s total land under maize production was affected by FAW, the national FAW task force reported in June 2018.
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