Farmers Field Schools

Firm Field School is generally carried out on trial plots that become laboratory for various experiments and observations. Based on the experiments here similar activities are taken to the individual farms which could be much bigger in size.FFS should have trial plots ranging from 2 to 4 hectares, where they can practice various systems like rain harvest, soil and water conservation, tree cropping at the edges, agro-forestry, animal husbandry, bee keeping, sericulture, food processing and marketing etc. A few gender sensitive groups of FFS have also emerged, where women play a crucial role in carrying out the experiments. Farmer Field School (FFS) is a widely used extension approach in the field of agriculture. Farmers participate in an FFS to learn the details of management in producing a crop or in a stage of the production cycle. It gives the farmer inopportunity to compare his existing management practices with new or modified practices in order to make decisions over the whole production process. Farmers design their study, conduct experiments, make observations and draw conclusions to put into practice during the next production cycle.