Farmer Field Schools (FFS) and Farmer Participatory Research (FPR)
In many case, the IPM programmes did not achieve the desired success, due to lack of access of resource poor farmers to information and technology. This calls for the need of extension activity involving collaboration among farmer groups, extension organizations and researchers. There are examples available, where the farmers learned about disease processes and management techniques and also tested promising crop varieties and breeding lines with the support of extension and research organizations.

The concepts of ‘Farmer Field Schools’ (FFS) and ‘Farmer Participatory Research’ (FPR) proved effective in this connection, particularly in dealing with the rice diseases in Vietnam (with the support of IRRI = Intern. Rice Res Institute ) and potato diseases in  Peru (with the support of CIP = Intern. Potato Centre). Thousands of FFS have been organized in Vietnam and Peru involving intensive, hands on training programme following an extension approach pioneered by FAO’s Inter-Country Programme on rice IPM in South and Southeast Asia Millions of Rice growers have been trained in IPM through FFS.