Access Agriculture

Access Agriculture is an international non-profit organisation working across the Global South, with headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, and regional office in Benin. Access Agriculture has developed a unique approach that merges farmer knowledge with scientific knowledge, embedding the FFS principle of discovery-based learning to support South–South farmer-to-farmer learning through video. Working closely with FFS groups and experienced farmers, the organisation produces new training videos through its network of trained local partners.

Its open-access video platform hosts the world’s largest collection of broadcast-quality training videos on agroecology and rural entrepreneurship, available in more than 110 international and local languages. The platform is accessible in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Bangla, Hindi and Arabic. 
As a world-leading scaling organisation, Access Agriculture strengthens the capacity of development organisations, extension services, education institutes, TV and rural radio stations, and farmer organisations in their outreach activities. More than 5,000 organisations in over 130 countries have already used Access Agriculture videos for training farmers, both within FFS and through other community interventions. 

Through its Young Entrepreneur Challenge Fund, Access Agriculture supports youth to develop businesses around video dissemination, enabling large groups of farmers to access knowledge. As well as becoming independent agricultural advisers, these young people are also developing complementary activities that help to strengthen the resilience of local food systems. These young entrepreneurs help broaden the impact of FFS and other initiatives. To date, Access Agriculture has reached over 90 million people in rural areas of Africa, Asia, and Latin America through multiple distribution channels. 
Together, Farmer Field Schools and Access Agriculture create powerful synergies for inclusive knowledge sharing, farmer empowerment, and scaling of agroecological practices worldwide.

Contact: Vinjeru Mlenga

Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE)

Founded in 1945 with the creation of the CARE Package®, CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. CARE places special focus on working alongside poor girls and women because, equipped with the proper resources, they have the power to lift whole families and entire communities out of poverty. Our seven decades of experience show that when you empower a girl or woman, she becomes a catalyst, creating ripples of positive change that lift up everyone around her. That’s why girls and women are at the heart of CARE’s community-based efforts to improve education, health and economic opportunity for everyone.

Contacts: Pranati Mohanraj, Maureen Miruka & Emily Janoch

Centre de Suivi Écologique (CSE)

The CSE is a Center of Excellence specialized in space technologies, particularly in the collection, entry, processing, analysis, and dissemination of data and information on the environment and natural resources. Through the “Environmental Monitoring and Food Security” program, the CSE provides support to various government bodies and research institutions on issues such as: vegetation monitoring, pastoral monitoring, agricultural campaign monitoring, bushfire monitoring, characterization and development of management plans for pastoral units, development of climate change adaptation plans, and climate change vulnerability analysis. 

The CSE is a partner of FAO in the implementation of the project Integration of climate resilience into agro-pastoral production for food security in vulnerable rural areas through the Farmer Field School approach. The CSE aims to integrate this approach into its projects and programs. 

Contact: Amadou Sall & Abdoulaye Faye

Development in Gardening (DIG)

Development in Gardening (DIG) is an international US non-profit that was founded in 2006 out of a collaborative garden project with the Infectious Disease Ward at Fann National Hospital in Senegal. Over the past twenty years, DIG has developed a unique Farmer Field School model designed to serve communities whose needs are often not met by traditional agriculture programs, including indigenous groups, PLHIV, families with malnourished children, displaced persons, and those living on under a dollar a day.

Grounded in the principles and practices of agroecology, DIG's iterative model measurably improves climate resilience, food security, nutrition, financial resilience, and social cohesion. The model has also been used to advance food sovereignty by conserving and promoting indigenous and culturally-important foods, and DIG received the 2024 FAO Farmer Field School Innovation Award for a project developed alongside the Batwa to revive their indigenous, forest-based food system. Over 11,000 farmers across seven countries have been trained under DIG's Farmer Field School, and each graduated farmer goes on to train an average of four others in their community.

Contacts: Olivia Nyaidho & Sarah Drummond

African Centre for Field Schools and Innovation (ACFiSICo)

The African Centre for Field Schools and Innovation (ACFiSICo) is a pan-African private organization registered in Uganda that evolved from the Eastern Africa Field Schools Hub (EA FSH). Building on this foundation, ACFiSICo works across the continent to strengthen, scale, and innovate with the Farmer Field School (FFS) approach.

Originally hosted by the African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS), the EA FSH was established to support the institutionalization of the FFS approach, which is now widely embedded in government extension systems and higher education institutions across Eastern Africa. The Centre serves as a regional and continental hub for capacity development, technical backstopping, and knowledge exchange, supporting FFS initiatives across multiple countries including Burundi, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Grounded in participatory learning and agroecological principles, ACFiSICo promotes high-quality, inclusive Farmer Field School implementation to improve livelihoods, resilience, and innovation among farmers and agro-pastoralists.

Contact: Edwin Adenya and Max Olupot

FAO elearning academy

Within the context of the collaboration between Global Farmer Field School Platform and the FAO elearning Academy offers over 1,000 free, multilingual and certified elearning courses, as a global public good. The thematic areas covered are farmer field schools, crop production, climate smart agriculture, nutrition, sustainable food systems,  water management, soils restoration, gender empowerment,  responsible management of natural resources among others. The FAO elearning Academy is adopting the Digital Badges Certification System, to certify the acquisition of competencies, in order to progress talents within organizations for in-service professionals and increase employment opportunities, for young professionals, who are entering in the professional world. 

Contact: Cristina Petracchi

Farming Integrated Development Association (FIDA)

The Farming Integrated Development Association (FIDA) is a not-for-profit company born from a UN-FAO-backed grassroots movement and formally established in 2006 in district Vehari, South Punjab, Pakistan. Rooted in the National Integrated Pest Management (Nat-IPM) Programme — a joint initiative of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, and the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) — FIDA was built by farmers, for farmers.

Today, FIDA is one of Pakistan's most active FFS-implementing organizations, delivering integrated development across 22 districts across Pakistan. Through 11,06 Farmer Field Schools (FFS), 955 Women Open Schools (WOS), 890 Children Ecology Clubs (CEC), and need based capacity building programs FIDA has graduated over 27,000 farmers, 23,800 women, and 22,200 children — collectively impacting more than 787,303 lives across the country.

FIDA's work spans five interconnected thematic areas: Livelihood Sustainability, Nutritional Assurance, Climate Resilience, Market Empowerment, and WASH. Partnering with IFAD, CARE International, Zakat Foundation of America, Penny Appeal (UK), Children of Adam (UK), ICARDA, and GAIN, FIDA delivers transformative change through farmer-led, community-centered solutions. 

FIDA's vision: a thriving, self-reliant Pakistan where farmers, women, and youth are equipped with the skills, knowledge, and resources to achieve sustainable livelihoods, food security, and climate resilience.

For more details please visit FIDA website

Contact : Iqbal Muhammad

FFS promotion services

Farmer Field School Promotion Services (FFS-PS) is a company limited by guarantee established in Kenya in 2006. It was founded by Farmer Field School (FFS) professionals and trainers who have been actively involved in the introduction and expansion of the FFS approach in Africa since 1995.

FFS-PS supports stakeholders across the agricultural sector to foster innovation and promote participatory and experiential learning approaches. Its work contributes to improved food security, sustainable natural resource management, and the empowerment of local communities.

The organization focuses on facilitation, capacity development, quality assurance, knowledge sharing and the scaling up of people-centred learning approaches among agricultural service providers and partners in Eastern and Southern Africa.

In addition, FFS-PS has extended its engagement at global level through participation in the Drylands Sustainable Landscapes Impact Programme (DSL-IP). In this context, its team members have worked as consultants with the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), supporting FFS-related activities across six countries in Southern Africa: Zimbabwe, Malawi, Namibia, Angola, Botswana and Tanzania.

FFS-PS has also contributed to innovation and knowledge exchange by organizing an international workshop on Farmer Market Schools at Pwani University in Kilifi, Kenya, bringing together practitioners and stakeholders to advance market-oriented learning approaches within the FFS framework.

International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is a specialized UN agency dedicated to eradicating rural poverty in developing countries. Its goal is to enable poor rural women and men to improve their food and nutrition security, increase their incomes and strengthen their resilience.  IFAD’s focus on smallholder farmers and rural poverty makes the FFS a relevant approach amongst the different extension approaches being supported by IFAD resources and implemented by government partners.

IFAD’s engagement with FFS dates back to 1999 through grants in support to FFS in Eastern Africa followed by several grants to assess FFS effectiveness and scale them up. Presently, FFS is the approach often used for extension organisations in several of IFAD’s investment programmes globally. This is especially true for the Eastern and Southern Africa, West and Central Africa and Asia and the Pacific regions and to a lesser extent for the Near East and North Africa and Latin America and Caribbean regions.

The FFS thematic areas include for example, integrated vegetable production in greenhouse and open fields, staple food crops, Integrated Pest Management, seed production, conservation agriculture, livestock production, pastoralists and rangeland management, agro-ecological approaches and production and use of bio-inputs.

IFAD has seen variable quality of the implementation of the of the FFS approach in different countries, due to variable understanding of the basic FFS principles, confusion with simple demonstrations and choice of the FFS plot not be related to the ability of farmers to invest in the inputs and/or technology. IFAD continues to work to address this issues and improve the quality and data collection and analysis from FFS.

Contact: Robert Delve, Fenton Beed, Hadi Buyung and Boris Kouassi

Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)

The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), as the implementing agency for providing Japan’s official development assistance (ODA) in an integrated fashion, carries out international cooperation with developing countries.

JICA has started using the FFS approach to social forestry extension in 2004 in Kenya. Using three core activities, Agro-Eco-System Analysis (AESA), Group Dynamics and Special Topics, the project in Kenya (2004-2009) contributed to both environmental conservation and livelihood enhancement of farmers. Before then, FFS had mostly focused on agriculture, thus the project innovated the approach by adapting it to social forestry, including a combination of agriculture and forestry components, and strategies to raise interest of farmers in forestry fields.

Contact: Emi Teshima & Mari Miura

Oxfam Novib

Oxfam Novib is a global development organization working with local partners and communities to build resilient, inclusive and sustainable livelihoods. Through its Seeds and Agrobiodiversity Programme, Oxfam Novib promotes agroecological approaches, participatory plant breeding, agrobiodiversity conservation, nutrition, and farmer-managed seed systems.

Together with research institutions, local implementing partners, farmer associations and public actors across countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, Oxfam Novib has supported the establishment of more than 1,500 Farmer Field Schools. As a result, we could contribute to reaching farming communities with approaches that strengthen climate resilience, food and nutrition security, and the enhance access and sustainable use of plant genetic resources, all based on  agroecological principles.

Oxfam Novib views Farmer Field Schools as a powerful catalyst for co-learning, community empowerment, self-organization and collective action, helping farming communities develop locally adapted solutions and drive sustainable change.

By creating spaces where farmers combine local and scientific knowledge, jointly identify challenges and develop locally adapted solutions, Farmer Field Schools help drive lasting systemic change towards more equitable, resilient and sustainable food systems.

Find more information and resources on our programs website https://seedsforresilience.org

Contact: Hilton Mbozi and Martina Huber

Platform for Agrobiodversity Research (PAR)

The overall goal of the Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research (PAR) is to enhance the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity for meeting human needs by improving knowledge of all its different aspects. PAR is hosted by The Raffaella Foundation.
Integrating agrobiodiversity into FFS goes beyond crops. It includes crops, animals, fish and wild plants used by people in agricultural landscapes. It encompasses integrating biodiversity in the wider agro-ecosystem and provides important ecosystem services. 

PAR host the Diversity Assessment Tool for Agrobiodiversity and Resilience  - DATAR, a new freeware pilot software platform with a web interface, the DATAR Web Portal, and an Android App in English, French, Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Armenian and Italian that allows the integration of diverse crop varieties, livestock breeds, and aquatic farmed-types into decision-making plans. 

Under the principals that agrobiodiversity is not just ”out there” but is a result of the continuously changing relationship between farmers, pastoralists, forest dwellers, fishers and their natural environment; PAR supports the FFS Global agenda through:

• its development of an adequate agrobiodiversity knowledge base through collating, synthesizing and disseminating agrobiodiversity knowledge, making available the relevant tools and practices that support improved use of agrobiodiversity, and identifying areas where information is lacking and new knowledge is needed including in FFS;
• through identifying ways in which agrobiodiversity can contribute to addressing some of the major global challenges faced today (e.g. environmental degradation, poverty alleviation, climate change, water quality and scarcity, and new global disease threats) by making available the information and options that ensure the contribution of agrobiodiversity in FFS; and through
• facilitating  relevant new and innovative research partnerships, that strengthen multidisciplinary and participatory agrobiodiversity research, and involve work on different agro-ecosystem components (such as livestock, crops, soils, pollinators, etc.) and contribute to building agrobiodiversity research capacity, particularly in the developing regions

PAR has carried out evaluations of the diversity of crop and livestock enterprises among agro-biodiversity and non agro-biodiversity farmer field schools (ABD-FFS).

Contact: Diana Lope Alzina

Practical Action

Practical Action is an International Development organization established in 1966 with the objective of reducing poverty through wider use of appropriate technologies in developing countries. With the Head Office in the UK, Practical Action works through its Country and Regional Offices in Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Sudan, Zimbabwe and Peru.

Across the different countries, Practical Action works in (1) Access to energy (2) Agriculture, Markets and Food security (3) Urban Water, Sanitation and Waste and (4) Disaster Risk Reduction. In addition to these, Climate Change, Making markets work for the poor and Practical Answers to Poverty are considered as cross cutting sectors. We also mainstream gender across all our programmatic works. The main objective of the organization is to change the people’s life through adopting and using technologies, sharing knowledge and influencing for impact at scale.

Focal persons:

• Menila Kharel Programme Coordinator, Agriculture, food security and Markets, Nepal 
• Afsari Begum Programme Manager, Bangladesh 
• Melody Makumbe Project Manager, Sustainable Agriculture and Livelihoods, Zimbabawe 
• Jose Tirabanti Project Manager, Livelihoods and Markets, Peru