| Abstract |
The USAID Environmental Services Program (ESP) promotes better health by improving water resources management and increasing access to clean water supply and sanitation services. ESP takes a ‘Ridges to Reefs’ approach, to ensure the availability of clean water by protecting fragile upland sources, while working with water providers and users in the lowlands. The ESP program encompasses three distinct components: Watershed Management and Biodiversity
Conservation; Environmental Services Delivery; and Environmental Services Finance. Sound management of upland watershed ecosystems is critical to the success of all of ESP’s programs; without good watershed management, there can be little improvement of downstream water delivery or environmental sanitation. An approach known as the Farmer Field School (FFS) has been adapted as the primary strategy of this key program component, carried out with communities living in or adjacent to vital watershed catchment areas. The Farmer Field School (FFS) is an approach to experiential learning first developed in Indonesia during the 1980s and ‘90s to encourage farmers to practice Integrated Pest Management (IPM) in rice. The FFS model combines adult non-formal education with agroecosystem analysis, involving a series of weekly meetings over the course of an entire growing season. Small groups of farmers conduct in-field observation and analysis, and make crop management decisions. The FFS approach represents a radical departure from prior models of agricultural extension. IPM Farmer Field Schools proved to be quite effective, and the model has subsequently been adapted to a broad range of agricultural crops and systems, in at least 78
developing countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, with a total of over four million graduates. This book describes ESP’s adaptation and application of the Farmer Field School model to promote sustainable agro-forestry and integrated watershed management in the Indonesian provinces Aceh, North and West Sumatra, and East, Central and West Java. [authors abstract]
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