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Farmer Field Schools for IPM: Refresh your memory

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Learning objectives

From a farmer who has participated in an FFS we expect that he has a good basic knowledge of what is going on in his field. He knows his crop, understands relationships between pests and natural enemies, and has started to increase his skills in crop and pest management. The FFS curriculum therefore deals with many different topics. In the FFS the farmers learn about:

  • The plant
  • Seedling health
  • The crop
  • The ecosystem
  • Plant compensation
  • Soil
  • Collecting insects
  • Insect identification
  • Insect pest management
  • Diseases
  • Disease management
  • Weed management
  • Pesticides
  • Problems caused by pesticides
  • Etc.

 

 

 Training on health effects of pesticides

Eggs of lacewing

 
Larva of ladybird beetle with aphids

 

   Adult moth
Using sweepnet to collect pests and natural enemies in an abandoned cabbage field

 

   A farmer shows the Neem and Bt products she uses

 

In the FFS the farmers learn about:

The plant

Plant parts

  • Drawings of plants and plant parts
  • Understand their function

Crops stages, crop cycle

  • Seedling
  • Vegetative
  • Flowering
  • Fruit setting
  • Ripening stage

Plant growth

  • Energy / energy flow
  • Nutrients / nutrient cycle
  • Photosynthesis
  • Water

 

   Cauliflower plant

 

Seedling health

Soil preparation

  • Plowing or no-tillage
  • Trichoderma
  • Fertilizer
  • Manure
  • Etc.

Healthy seeds

  • Variety
  • Seed treatment
  • Germination test

Crop management

  • Spacing / seeding rate
  • Water management
  • Weed management
  • Shade
  • Mulching
  • Transplanting

 

 

  

Development of a seedling

The crop

Know the crop

  • Understand the different crop stages
  • Make drawings
  • Which pests are important in each crop stage?

Crop stages

  • Planting
  • Seed
  • Seedling
  • Growth
  • Vegetative stage
  • Flowering stage
  • Ripening
  • Fruiting
  • Harvest

Crop management

  • Sowing
  • Transplanting
  • Weeding
  • Fertilizer use
  • Pest management
  • Pruning / thinning
  • Harvesting
 		   Chinese kale seedling

Chinese kale growing

Chinese kale harvesting (in a field experiment)

 

The ecosystem

What is an ecosystem?

  • Farmers make drawing of ecosystem

Elements of ecosystem

  • Physical
  • Biological

The agro-ecosystem

  • Discuss about agro-ecosystem as preparation for AESA
  • Weather
  • Soil
  • Water
  • Plant / crop
  • Pests
    • Insects
    • Diseases
    • Weeds
  • Natural enemies
    • Predators
    • Parasitoids
    • Pathogens

Balanced ecosystem

  • Population growth
  • Population dynamics
  • Interactions between species
  • Interdependence
  • Food webs
  • Interaction between pests and defenders
  • Resurgence mechanisms
  • Intercropping
  • Value of weeds
  • Bio-diversity

Energy flow in 3 (or 4) feeding levels

  • Plant
  • Herbivore
  • Predator / parasitoid
  • (Hyper-parasitoid)
 		  

 

Plant compensation

Discuss how plants can compensate for damage by pests

Set experiments:

  • Simulation of insect damage to observe crop compensation
    • Rice
      • Tillers
      • Leaves
    • Vegetables
      • Leaves
      • Shoots / branches

Create understanding that some damage can be tolerated

 		   Cutting a piece of a leaf to simulate crop damage

Cutting a piece of a leaf to simulate crop damage

 

The soil

Soil structure

Organic matter

Nutrients

  • NPK
  • Micro-nutrients
  • Soil testing
  • Fertilizer management

Soil health

  • Micro-organisms

Soil improvement

  • Manure
  • Compost
  • Mulching

Water

Irrigation of soil covered with mulch

   Mulching with straw

Compost is being mixed with Trichoderma