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In the Morne Prosper community, Dominica, women farmers benefited from knowledge shared during Farmer Field Schools instituted by the Ministry of Agriculture

The breeding objectives and activities of a Farmer Field School (FFS) season are based on the ‘diagnostic stage’, in which farmers perform a collective diagnosis of their situation and the problems and challenges they encounter in growing their crops and varieties. The diagnostic stage is crucial to ensure that the [...]

Le changement climatique est une réalité au Mali, où la population et l’économie sont majoritairement dépendantes de l’agriculture, de l’élevage et de la pêche. Dans le cadre du changement climatique, le Mali sera confronté à une nette augmentation de la température moyenne de 2 o C en 2050 et 4 [...]

This report unpacks and explores farmer-managed seed systems and their contribution to food and seed sovereignty, including the benefits they provide to farming communities as a part of their sociocultural, economic, spiritual and ecological livelihoods. The report highlights, exposes and explores how these systems work. It builds on reports of [...]

In this module we will prepare the Farmer Field School (FFS) site and the plots of land on which we will do the fieldwork and testing of lines for the next season. The way we design the plots and allocate each of the lines that we sow should minimize the [...]

This manual provides instructions and background for the SD=HS Training of Trainers (ToT) courses. In these courses (which mostly take up around three weeks), trainers are prepared to facilitate a season of Farmer Field School activities on Participatory Plant Breeding. Topics include the organisation of a Farmer Field School, the [...]

The book systematizes experiences of hundreds of Farmer Field Schools (FFS) in Colombia, developed by FAO and other institutions, in multiple social projects to strengthen communities and family farming organizations. These efforts were aimed at promoting food security, self- consumption, livelihoods, social inclusion of ethnic groups, sustainable intensification [...]

In EDN 133 we described a cereal/legume intercropping strategy in which two rows of a cereal crop are alternated with four rows of a legume. This “2:4:2” planting sequence is an outcome of research done by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and national partners, with cowpea as the [...]

Recurrent drought, degraded rangelands and reduced access to traditional grazing lands have left pastoral communities in the Horn of Africa’s arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) more vulnerable and facing severe livestock feed shortages. During dry spells, pastoral communities suffer from food and nutrition insecurity, as well as shrinking incomes occasioned [...]

On s’attend à ce que les changements climatiques provoquent de plus en plus d’événements extrêmes (sécheresses et inondations) au Mali, rendant la production de cultures et l’élevage plus difficiles pour les agriculteurs et réduisant ainsi la sécurité alimentaire et les revenus des plus pauvres du pays. Le projet visait à fournir [...]