The Food and Agriculture Organizations (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) is conducting training on capacity building for facilitators of the Farmers’ Field School (FFS) in the North-east zone, to initiate innovations in the agricultural sector of economy.
The Head of FAO, North-east Office, Al Hassan Cissie, while declaring the training open in Maiduguri, disclosed that the three-week training, funded by the Norwegian Government was to complement extension services, which had been disrupted in the country.
FFS is a form of education which uses experiential learning methods to build farmers’ expertise in order to decentralize expertise to the field level by educating local people to analyze field situations and to make appropriate management decisions.
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The approach is to help smallholder farmers to strengthen group cohesion, maintain motivation and help participants to develop organizational skills in their agro-ecosystems which require management decisions that are tailored to local and contemporary conditions.
Cissie explained that the school is a platform for an enabling environment where farmers can meet and exchange ideas and innovations about farm management, good agricultural practices, livestock and fisheries production across North-east zone in Borno, Adamawa, Taraba, Sokoto and Yobe states.
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According to him, FFS is an interactive and participatory learning-by-doing approach among farmers/pastoralists in their communities, anchored on non-formal adult education system to enable learning through direct experience with the integration of scientific insights into local knowledge systems.
Present at the occasion was the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture, Bulama Gana who expressed his pleasure over the program, saying the school is a new innovation based on field observations and testing of possible solutions, to enable farmers to adopt the most suitable practices in the farming systems.
