Minya, Egypt - Farmer Field School (FFS) is a participatory education approach that brings together a group of small-scale farmers to solve their problems through sustainable agriculture practices. The FFS approach offers space for hands-on group learning, enhancing skills for observation and critical analysis and improved decision making by local communities’ feedback. This course provides an overview of the FFS approach, starting from its fundamental principles and its brief history to its key elements.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have implemented three FFSs within the Water Efficiency, Productivity and Sustainability regional project in Egypt for the sugar beet, sugar cane and wheat crops. The main objective of the FFSs were to empower farmers with the knowledge and skills to make them experts in their own fields; to sharpen the farmers’ ability to make critical and informed decisions that render their farming profitable and sustainable; to sensitise farmers in new ways of thinking and problem solving and to help farmers learn how to organize themselves and their communities. A field school therefore is a process and not a goal.

FFS sessions included three main parts each session: agro ecosystem analysis, a group dynamics exercise and discussion on a special topic. In order to convince farmers that the introduced methodology and content is indeed beneficial, a selection of two fields at the beginning of each FFS was made: one for farming as usual which called the controlled field and the other is the experimental field for practicing good agricultural practices and FAO’s methodology. Discussion topics included crop water requirements, irrigation scheduling, fertilization, pest control, good agricultural practices (including hoeing and weed management), compost, pre-harvest and post-harvest and handling practices, recording production costs, and much more.

One of the pillars of FAO’s FFS methodology is to implement a graduation ceremony at the end of every FFS season, which was the case with the three FFSs implemented in Al-Minya, Egypt. The graduation ceremonies included opening speeches from different stakeholders, testimonials from the farmers and highlighting of the key results between the controlled and experimental fields.

The first graduation ceremony took place in June 2021 for the sugar beet FFSs. Two sugar beet FFS for women have been implemented in Al-Minya: one in Mansheyet El Nasr village gathering 19 beneficiaries and the other in Beni Ebeid village gathering 18 beneficiaries. Key results were visible in terms of yield produced and costs reduced: 54 tons of sugar beet were harvested from the experimental field, while only 37 tons were harvested from the controlled field. At the time in June 2021, one ton was for 650 EGP, therefore an additional 11 050 EGP were obtained from the experimental field, thanks to FAO’s intervention methods.

The second graduation ceremony took place in March 2022 for the sugar cane FFS. One sugar cane FFS for men have been implemented in El Awam village, Al-Minya gathering 25 beneficiaries. Key results were visible in terms of yield produced, crop quality and irrigation time: 48 tons of sugar cane were harvested from the experimental field, while only 36 tons were harvested from the controlled field. Irrigation time decreased from four hours to three hours.

Finally, the third graduation ceremony took place in May 2022 for the wheat FFSs. Two wheat FFSs for women have been implemented in Al-Minya: one in Abadit Shokry village gathering 25 beneficiaries and the other in Hwaslia village gathering 25 beneficiaries. Key results were visible in terms of yield produced and irrigation time: 28 ardab* of wheat were harvested from the experimental field, while only 21 ardab were harvested from the controlled field. Irrigation time decreased from four hours to two and a half hours.

This activity is implemented under the framework of the regional project “Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Water Efficiency/ Productivity and Sustainability in the Near East and North Africa - WEPS-NENA” implemented by FAO, and funded by the Swedish International Development and Cooperation Agency.

*1 Ardab = 150 kg

 Source: FAO Regional Office for Near East and North Africa