By Fostina Mkandawire
In an effort to assist in the adaptation of climate change-related threats, the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) representative for Malawi, Zhijun Chen, has called for continuous dissemination of advisory information and capacity strengthening for small scale farmers.
Chen made the call in Salima district during a four-day training workshop for Farmer Field School practitioners to build Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) systems for farmer field school (FFS) programmes.
He said the FFSs, situated in the communities provide essential services which help to improve communities and small-scale producers livelihoods and support their work in the sustainable production of diverse crops.
“Over the last 30 years, the Farmer Field School (FFS) has emerged as a participatory advisory service and education methodology to foster farmers empowerment, development and adaptation across highly diverse farming contexts and systems,” he said.He further said, for sustainable agricultural production and ecosystem preservation, there is need for Farmer Field Schools to support the development of the skills and knowledge needed by farmers for informed and locally adapted decision-making.
“The objective of this workshop is to strengthen FAOs and partners capacity to implement solid monitoring, evaluation and learning across key FFS programmes. This will be achieved by enabling participants to gain confidence in domesticating the Global MEL framework and toolkit for FFS,” he said.
Chen revealed that they are digitalising the monitoring toolkit to ensure better usage of a revised compilation of indicators by monitoring of Farmer Field Schools to improve the impact of their FFS projects.
On his part, Director of Agricultural Services for Salima, Eniford Kanyimbo, praised the training, highlighting the importance of monitoring, evaluation, and learning toolkit and how they are integrated in Farmer Field Schools.
“We have noted a great improvement in farming mechanisms, after the introduction of Farmer Field Schools here in Salima district especially in areas of conservation agriculture, climate change adaptation, agro ecological production, and market value addition,” he said.
The workshop attracted 35 international participants from FAO and key partners involved in significant FFS project implementations.
