Farmer Field School, Farmer Life School, Farmers Club:
Enriching Knowledge and Empowering Farmers?
(a case study from Cambodia)
Yunita T. Winarto
CSEAS, Kyoto University – Research Fellow and
University of Indonesia – Faculty Staff, Email: winarto@cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp
ABSTRACT
The Integrated Pest Management program introduced in Southeast Asian countries in 1990s
has been known as setting up a new paradigm for the agricultural development in the highintensified farming regions, such as Indonesia and the Philippines to alleviate its negative
impacts upon farmers` life and habitat. Despite this, the Integrated Pest Management has also
provided an alternative approach for the enhancement of small-scale livelihoods in the areas
where `modern technologies` were recently introduced, such as in Cambodia. At the time
Cambodia was about to develop their agriculture in early 1990s, `lessons-learned` from
Indonesia and the Philippines were drawn that high-intensified agricultural strategy on the
basis of modern technologies did not produce a sustainable yield and environment. The
Cambodian government agreed to adopt the Integrated Pest Management program in 1993 to
avoid such a similar problem. On the other hand, they realized that improving farming
practices is an urgent need for the Cambodian farmers. In such a situation, how do the
Cambodian implement the Integrated Pest Management program to achieve both objectives?
Several activities have been developed by the national government and non-government
organizations in Cambodia—i.e. IPM Farmer Field School, Farmer Life School, and Farmers`
Club—in order to enrich farmers` knowledge, improve farming practices, empower farmers,
and establish farmers` organization. In this paper I will discuss the extent to which those
activities provide a promising path towards the enhancement of small-scale livelihood and
natural resource management through enriching knowledge and empowering farmers. To
what extend could such objectives been achieved in the context where free market is also
widely open for various `modern technologies` to enter to farmers` life? Do those approaches
have seriously considered the contextual factors contributing to the alleviation of the negative
impacts in adopting `modern technologies` in farming practices?