Australian Development Gateway

The Australian Development Gateway (ADG) strives to support members of the development community in their efforts to reduce poverty and enhance sustainable development in the Asia Pacific region. The site has been created with participation from members of government, private, academia and non-government organisations. User feedback mechanisms have been incorporated to guide future directions of the site. The site is optimised for low bandwidth access to enable the widest participation throughout the Asia Pacific region.

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Agricultural education, training & capacity building

Sustainability of the farmer field school approach to agricultural extension (pdf 50kb)

Agricultural extension programs based on the Farmer Field School (FFS) approach are being implemented in many developing countries in Asia and Africa. Evidence from the Philippines and Indonesia, two key areas in implementing this extension effort, shows that fiscal unsustainability of the FFS if applied on a large scale is a risk that cannot be ignored.

This paper focuses on some aspects of a specific approach to agricultural extension, that is, FSS The FFS was designed originally as a way to introduce integrated pest management (or IPM) practices to irrigated rice farmers in Asia. The Philippines and Indonesia were key areas in implementing this extension effort. Experiences with IPM-FFS in these two countries have since been documented and used to promote and expand FFS and FFS-type activities to other countries and to other crops. Currently, FFS activities are being implemented in many developing countries, although only a few operate FFS as a nationwide system.

 

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