Abstract

PEREZ B., JAVIER ORLANDO; PACHON-ARIZA, FABIO ALBERTO  and  PARRADO B., ÁLVARO. Potato Field Schools and their contribution to building organizational processes in two Colombian towns. rev.colomb.cienc.hortic. [online]. 2015, vol.9, n.2, pp.301-312. ISSN 2011-2173.  https://doi.org/10.17584/rcch.2015v9i2.4186.

Farmer Field Schools (FFS) are one of the more popular methodologies for sharing knowledge and solving problems in different scenarios. In agriculture, FFS have been adopted in many developing countries as a strong and cheap strategy to include many participants in the training process. This paper shows the results of two Farmer Field Schools for the potato carried out in Ubaque and Chipaque, two towns in the central region of Colombia. After an evaluation using a structured survey with all of the participants in these FFS, this study showed an improvement in the technical topics. However, the findings indicated that the organizational processes are less relevant than the technical ones. Nevertheless, it is crucial that farmers always have access to all the technical methods described in the FFS in order to use these tools successfully.

Keywords : rural development; social capital; farmer organizations; agroecological analysis.

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