Organic News
Farmer Field Schools in Ireland
Farmer Field Schools have been used extensively in Asia, Africa, and South America and on a European level with Danish organic dairy farmers. Their main objective is to inform and empower farmers. They are based on the concept of participatory/experiential learning whereby a group of farmers come together and learn from each other.
The group meets once a month on each of the participants farms and looks at both successes and problems and then tries to come up with collective solutions to the issues that arise. Over the next five months I will be involved in the facilitation of a project looking into the potential benefits of Farmer Field Schools to Irish organic farmers.
I am currently working with two groups of five growers each, one from County Cork and the other in the Clare/Galway region. The findings from this will contribute to my Masters thesis in which I am also planning to include a nationwide survey of growers’ attitudes to the provision of training and advice in the Republic. The government has flagged the expansion of discussion and producer groups as being two of its action points in the Organic action plan.
If the Farmer Field School concept proves to be useful it could be rolled out to various groups on a national basis to fulfil this. This project constitutes the final part of my Postgraduate diploma/Msc in organic farming which I have been studying over the last two and a half years. This is a distance learning programme that is run by the Scottish Agricultural College in Aberdeen and sponsored by the National Organic Training Skillnet. My hope is that the results of the study will be of use to the Irish organic industry over the coming years.
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