Push-pull Curicullum for For Farmer Field Schools

Authors

• International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe)

Files

Description

Foreword

This push-pull curriculum for farmer field schools (FSS) is a major step towards getting the push-pull technology into the national extension systems in eastern and southern Africa. The FFS approach aims at supporting farmers by improving the quality of disseminating technology to ensure that majority of the farmers benefit from innovative technologies.

While research institutions have developed a range of technologies to solve local production problems in most smallholder farming systems, agricultural productivity has continued to decline. Many of the technologies have not been effectively disseminated to majority of the farmers and hence remain largely unknown except in few pilot areas. Still, others have not been tested on-farm by the farmers to allow adjustment to local conditions. Inappropriate management practices and increased pressures on resources, especially natural and economic resources, worsen the situation.

The push-pull strategy is a platform technology that has potential to improve livelihoods of smallholder farmers and rural families, increase agricultural productivity and improve environmental sustainability. These outcomes can be achieved by addressing problems of striga weed, stemborers and low soil fertility. These are major problems that constrain cereal production in sub-Saharan Africa in general and eastern Africa region in particular. Research conducted by icipe in collaboration with its partners, particularly KARI, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries in Kenya, and Rothamsted Research in UK, has shown that planting Napier grass (especially Bana variety) around a maize field intercropped with a fodder legume, desmodium (silverleaf or greenleaf), significantly reduces the problems of striga and stemborers.

The push-pull technology is now practised by more than 47,000 farmers in 19 districts in Kenya, 5 districts in Uganda, and training and demonstrations have started in Tanzania. Our aim is to expand this technology to as many farmers as possible in different agroecological zones, districts, and regions. To do so, the use of the Farmer Field School (FFS) approach is appropriate. Push-pull is a knowledge-intensive technology and requires a well-designed curriculum to enable farmers to understand and apply it on their farms. The curriculum is a roadmap for providing a range of learning opportunities for the various entry points of the technology for the smallholder farmers. It is also an important resource for the national extension system, the NGOs and the community-based organisations.

icipe hopes that this curriculum will enhance farmers’ understanding of their agroecosystems, cereal production constraints and potential of push-pull technology to address them. It is also hoped that it shall strengthen local decision making and technology development capacities for more productive and sustainable agriculture.

Prof. Christian Borgemeister Director General, icipe Nairobi, Kenya

ISBN

92 9064 188 6

Publication Date

2007

Publisher

International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe)

Comments

Copyright © 2007, 2011 International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology. All rights reserved.

Reprinted December 2011

Recommended Citation

International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe). (2007). Push-pull Curicullum for For Farmer Field Schools. Retrieved from https://thehive.icipe.org/manuals/21