Farmer Field School for the empowerment of farmers with disabilities

17/05/2023

“We used to have very limited sources of information; now the situation is different. We learn from the Farmer Field School and we even pass on the knowledge we gain to other members of our society,” said Khaled Mohamed.

Khaled Mohamed and Mohamed Abd ElAziz are two best friends working as farmers in the Oasis of El Kharga, Egypt. They share several commonalities other than being illiterate and having hearing impairments, as both men are married and both have four children.

The two were also born into families of farmers where they learned all their skills as they watched and imitated the work of their family members and fellow farmers growing up. As they became farmers themselves, they started to rely on palm trees and dates to earn their livelihoods.

However, they are faced with many challenges to maintain their crop production. They recall that an outbreak of red palm weevil insects in their farms in 2017 gave a big blow to their production and greatly affected them financially. Khaled and Mohamed also added that the scarcity of water resources in the Oasis, which is completely surrounded by a desert, also makes it quite difficult to grow their palm trees.

“The situation was very critical then. We could barely produce any dates and the harvest was insufficient. Even the small amount of dates we did produce were not the best quality. It was very difficult as we could not even provide our families financially with their basic needs,” said Mohamed.

When Khaled and Mohamed heard of FAO Egypt’s Farmer Field Schools (FFS) that were being implemented in the Oasis, they were intrigued to join to learn how to protect their farm against harmful pests and how to maneuver water scarcity. However, they wondered if they would benefit from the school due to their impairment, and that is when they learned that the FFS offers a sign language instructor for both the theoretical and practical content. The farmers were able to learn many different sustainable agricultural practices as well as water-saving practices as measures of water management to help them cope with climate change challenges in the Kharga Oasis.

“Although the water scarcity situation is getting tougher, I now know how to manage my water sources correctly and this has helped me increase the quality and production of my dates,” stated Khaled.

Khaled and Mohamed are also greatly benefiting from the continuous follow-up from the Biological Control Laboratory, which is established by the Plant Protection Research Institute in the Oasis under the guidance of the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation. The lab provides technical support to farmers to fight the spread of the red palm weevil in addition to other extension services such as pest management and biological control.

Khaled and Mohamed are now planning to widen their scope and start growing wheat, beans and corn. With the knowledge and experience they have gained from the FFS, they believe that they are now capable of growing more crops and increasing their earnings.

“Even considering the current national inflation, we are still gaining main profits and leading a much better life than before due to the expertise we gained from the Farmer Field School,” Mohamed concluded.