Danny Hunter has sent us this contribution. Until recently, Danny ran the TaroGen and DSAP projects at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community in Fiji. Thanks, Danny.
An interesting article from SciDevNet about farmer empowerment through Farmer Field Schools (FFS) reminded me of a great little programme that we had running in Samoa in the late nineties. Farmer Field Schools began as a training and extension approach for integrated pest management of rice, largely supported by FAO in Asia. Since then FFS have been used for a variety of agricultural crops, systems and problems, including livestock, and have spread to other regions of the world.
The article prompted me to reflect on earlier efforts that we made at the Alafua Campus of the University of the South Pacific in Samoa, using similar “field-based” approaches to help students and farmers (as well as researchers and extensionists!) learn about taro diversity and improvement. In 1993 Samoa was devastated by an outbreak of taro leaf blight. Initial responses using pesticides and cultural methods were futile and while introduced “resistant” varieties helped, the disease was still a major problem.
Continue reading “Farmer Field Schools in the Pacific and beyond”