Management of Potato Late Blight in the Peruvian Highlands: Evaluating the Benefits of Farmer Field Schools and Farmer Participatory Research

Farmer field schools (FFS) originally were developed for rice in Asia by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) for teaching integrated pest management. These were season-long courses involving 25 farmers and a trained facilitator. The main focus was promoting learning by discovery, which included hands-on training activities such as insect zoos and the use of field experiments to compare integrated pest management (IPM) strategies with farmers’ practices. Later, diseases such as rice blast also were addressed (8,11). More recently, the FFS model has been adapted to potato management in the Andes and other regions. Strategies for the management of potato disease problems such as late blight depend on local environmental conditions; therefore, control strategies need to be adjusted to the local environment. This is one reason why farmer participatory research (FPR) may be an important addition to the FFS model, because it encourages local experimentation to determine optimal management strategies. In Peru, the FFS approach was adapted with an emphasis on participatory research, particularly for testing promising resistant clones and fungicide strategies for late blight management. The Peruvian FFS have been described in more detail and in comparison to Asian field schools in a recent Plant Disease Feature (8). In this discussion, we will review the structure and features of the Peruvian FPR-FFS projects briefly and then emphasize the different types of benefits that might be achieved by FFS and FPR, and some approaches for evaluating the magnitude of these benefits. With the support of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the OPEC Fund for International Development, the International Potato Center (CIP) and partners implemented an FFS program between 1999 and 2002. Activities were undertaken in Peru and also in Bolivia, Ecuador, Uganda, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and China. In the case of Peru, CIP established a collaborative agreement with the nongovernmental organization CAREPeru, which had experience with potato but had not utilized the FFS methodology. In Peru, FPR-FFS consisted of 15 to 25 farmers who worked with a facilitator, an extension worker trained in teaching, participatory research, and agricultural science. They usually met every 2 weeks, following a format structured around a field guide with learning and research activities. An experimental field was used as a central point for farmers to consider different management approaches. In addition to farmer participation in technology evaluation, farmers provided feedback for evaluation of the programs and improvement of the FFS methodology. Potato late blight was a natural emphasis for the schools because it is the most important concern for potato growers in the Peruvian Andes. It is estimated that 15% of potato yield is lost directly to late blight, in addition to the cost of an average of six fungicide sprays per crop for adequate management (10). In a recent survey of farmers in Cajamarca, Contumaza, and San Miguel, Peru, late blight was perceived as the most important potato pest (10). Like many other plant diseases, late blight is challenging for farmers because of the complexity of the pathosystem, because the pathogen generally is not visible to the naked eye, and because the symptoms of the disease are not immediately visible due to a latent period. For late blight, both leaf and tuber blight are possible and the relationship between severity of leaf and tuber blight is complex. Although farmers generally have made extensive observations on ABSTRACT Ortiz, O., Garrett, K. A., Heath, J. J., Orrego, R., and Nelson, R. J. 2004. Management of potato late blight in the Peruvian highlands: Evaluating the benefits of farmer field schools and farmer participatory research. Plant Dis. 88:565-571.