The farmer field school (FFS) approach was developed by FAO and partners nearly 25 years ago in Southeast Asia as an alternative to the prevailing top-down extension method of the Green Revolution, which failed to work in situations where more complex and counter-intuitive problems existed, such as pesticide-induced pest outbreaks.  In a typical FFS a group of 20-25 farmers meets once a week in a local field setting and under the guidance of a trained facilitator. In groups of five they observe and compare two plots over the course of an entire cropping season. One plot follows local conventional methods while the other is used to experiment with what could be considered “best practices”. They experiment with and observe key elements of the agro-ecosystem by measuring plant development, taking samples of insects, weeds and diseased plants, and constructing simple cage experiments or comparing characteristics of different soils. At the end of the weekly meeting they present their findings in a plenary session, followed by discussion and planning for the coming weeks.