S15 - Session O3 - Assessing farmer field schools process to improve the participation of local actors: a case study in Tunisia

Authors: Rahma Jaouadi *, Guillaume Lestrelin, Nadhira Ben Aissa, Mehdi Ben Mimoun, Sami Bouarfa, Eric Scopel

Advisory services have long been considered key instruments to improve farm and crop management by introducing innovative practices and technologies in agricultural systems. Departing from a simple 'technology transfer' perspective, participatory approaches were developed after the 1980s to enhance the design and adoption of innovations. Farmer Field Schools (FFS), an advisory service strongly based on participatory principles, aim at supporting and fostering farmers' innovation. FFS have been used and adapted since the 1980s to meet context specific needs in crop or farm management through addressing integrative approaches. In this study, we review research articles on FFS looking specifically for an evaluation of the participation levels of local stakeholders. We also report on interviews with a number of FFS project leaders and we assess the effectiveness and participation levels of an FFS experiment in central Tunisia. We show that, despite numerous studies reporting on FFS experiments, there are no available records of how participatory approaches were applied and on how much local stakeholders were involved in those projects. In this purpose, evaluating stakeholders' participation level via an assessment of FFS application process become a must to improve their quality and effectiveness. Our results show that, operationally, there is a gap in applying FFS. Even if those approaches are classified as 'bottom-up', extensionists remain loyal to 'top-down' approaches. Thus, planned activities will not be adapted to local scope specifications. Therefore, they are not easily adopted and even more rejected by farmers. In conclusion, we suggest introducing new tools (e.g., role playing games) to create an interactive environment for discussions between stakeholders and to enhance the capacity of local farmers to contribute to the design of FFS experiments according to their needs.