190,000 happy farmers in a healthy environment - strengths of the ffs approach in rwanda
TRANSCRIPT
Every day, millions of farmers work in their fields to produce food for home consumption and sale on the market. Most Rwandan farmers have small plots only, so it is important to get the most out of the land. Therefore, Rwandan farmers are keen to learn and apply practices to increase their productivity
Strengths of the FFS approach in Rwanda
190,000 HAPPY FARMERS IN A HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT
and income. And that is why already 80,000 farmers have joined a Farmer Field School (FFS) group under the Rwanda FFS Initiative, which is implemented by the Rwanda Agricul-tural Board with assistance from BTC - Belgian development agency.
The secret behind the successful Farmer Field Schools is training farmers in an interactive and experimental way.
© BTC / Dieter Telemans
Learning by experience and funFarmer Field Schools create an interactive, practical and fun learning experience for farmers. Selected farmers are trained and coached to become facilitators of groups of farmers. Most importantly, farmers are not told what to do, but are taught to make decisions based on evidence from field observation and experiments.
“In the FFS group, we compare varieties as well as practices and evaluate all the findings ourselves. I really loved the ‘in-sect zoo’ experiment in which we put bean leaves and plant lice along with a ladybird beetle in a bottle and we checked what happened. The plant lice sucked the sap from the leaves but the ladybird beetle ate all the plant lice! That is how we learned which insects attack our plants and which insects are our friends. I am confident that we are now better prepared for what the future will throw at us. And, if we can’t find the solutions ourselves, we can always call our facilitator,” says Aimable Gatambire who joined an FFS group in 2011.
Farmers’ income more than doubledThe impact of the FFS is very significant. Overall, 92% of 2,897 FFS groups report an increase in productivity of at least 50%, but in some crops the results are even more impressive. The average income of the farmers has more than doubled (+164%). Furthermore, FFS farmers use less pesticide and conserve local genetic resources.
“We really could not believe our eyes when we harvested our cassava in the FFS plots. We just had never seen such big cassava roots. I think it was 6 or even 7 times bigger than what we are used to!” explains Ernest Kabeja, a cassava farmer. “Luckily enough, the big ones taste good as well!”
Another group member adds: “We are so happy to be mem-bers of a FFS group. It is agriculture that brought us together,
© BTC / Dieter Telemans
but there are more benefits to being a member. We established a savings component in our group, we now all have health insurance and we make sure that every member can pay the school fees. We even discuss HIV during our meetings.”
The success of the intervention has been well noted by the decision-makers. The FFS approach is now recognized as the most performing extension approach to increase productivity. The ultimate ambition of the Rwanda FFS initiative is to estab-lish 3 FFS groups in every Rwandan village, allowing practi-cally every Rwandan farmer to be a member. If the necessary funds can be raised in time, this goal could be achieved in only 5 years’ time. The approach is efficient and effective on a large scale. Now it’s a matter of continuing expansion and taking it from large to huge and transform Rwanda’s agriculture on a massive scale!
Farmers achieving research to solve their challengesParticipatory research is continuously the driving force for FFS implementation and has allowed farmers to:
� Decrease of the frequency and quantities of pesticides used for crop protection,
� Select appropriate varieties for adaptation to local conditions and to preference of farmers and market,
� Recover the most preferred crop varieties, � Increase significantly crop productivity by using the best
agronomic practices,� Achieve active on-farm conservation and exploitation of
genetic resources.
Farmers, in their quality of active actors of the agricultural re-search contribute thus to a higher ownership of innovations/technologies.
Quick win spin-off The trained FFS facilitators also act on the forefront of a quick win approach which was developed as a spin-off of the FFS approach. The FFS approach pro-vides farmers with a deep understanding of their farm-ing activities, but it takes time. Yet sometimes urgent interventions are needed to stop an emerging disease. The quick win strategy called ‘Community Mobilization Campaigns’ allows a rapid scaling up of a technical intervention which has proven to be successful in FFS. Thousands of farmers are mobilized by local leaders and work together on consolidated land under the technical guidance of the FFS facilitators. Since 2012, already 110,000 farmers were involved in campaigns to control BXW disease in banana and Striga in cereals.
For more information on this project, please contact [email protected]