Henk van den Berg , Jan Willem Ketelaar , Marcel Dicke , Marjon Fredrix
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引用次数: 27
Abstract
The capacity of farmers to adapt to changing environments is critical for sustainable, economically viable and resilient rural development. The Farmer Field School (FFS) was developed by FAO in the late 1980s to build farmers’ knowledge and skills for adaptive management. The FFS was subsequently implemented in over 90 countries by a multitude of stakeholders. We conducted case studies in Malawi and Indonesia to answer contemporary questions about the FFS, regarding its relevance at field level, its position in the institutional environment, and its contribution to rural development. We show that the FFS remains relevant at field level, helping farmers to adapt their agricultural practices and livelihood situation to changing circumstances. Differences in institutional arrangements between the two countries highlight the importance of a coordinated support for the FFS. Long-term impacts were found at farmer and institutional level. This study provides insight into the FFS, regarding the causal factors of change, institutional factors, and the role in continued development. As an approach that empowers rural people, the FFS thus contributes to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
期刊介绍：
The NJAS - Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, published since 1952, is the quarterly journal of the Royal Netherlands Society for Agricultural Sciences. NJAS aspires to be the main scientific platform for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research on complex and persistent problems in agricultural production, food and nutrition security and natural resource management. The societal and technical challenges in these domains require research integrating scientific disciplines and finding novel combinations of methodologies and conceptual frameworks. Moreover, the composite nature of these problems and challenges fits transdisciplinary research approaches embedded in constructive interactions with policy and practice and crossing the boundaries between science and society. Engaging with societal debate and creating decision space is an important task of research about the diverse impacts of novel agri-food technologies or policies. The international nature of food and nutrition security (e.g. global value chains, standardisation, trade), environmental problems (e.g. climate change or competing claims on natural resources), and risks related to agriculture (e.g. the spread of plant and animal diseases) challenges researchers to focus not only on lower levels of aggregation, but certainly to use interdisciplinary research to unravel linkages between scales or to analyse dynamics at higher levels of aggregation.
NJAS recognises that the widely acknowledged need for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, also increasingly expressed by policy makers and practitioners, needs a platform for creative researchers and out-of-the-box thinking in the domains of agriculture, food and environment. The journal aims to offer space for grounded, critical, and open discussions that advance the development and application of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research methodologies in the agricultural and life sciences.
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