We are experimenting with some different techniques for sharing knowledge. One of the challenges of this work is to find ways to effectively  get new ideas and new practices out to farmers in ways that they can accept. This then leads to the same farmers actually using those practices on  their farms--at least that is the idea. One of the other challenges is accessing the knowledge that farmers already have. There is a  tendency for everyone (both farmers and traditional trainers) to assume that farmers really don't know very much, and everyone looks  to the trained technician to have all the answers. So one of the things we have just started trying is a teaching technique called farmer field schools. The concept of FFS has been around for a while, and has worked well, especially for training in pest management. We just spent this last week, working on trying to adapt the FFS system to our situation, for teaching various topics on sustainable agriculture. Pictured below is the first workshop in the field, and you can see farmers making observations on tree seedlings in a backyard nursery. The idea is that farmers observe, and learn, share with each  other, and  share with training  staff. This puts everyone on more of an equal footing,  rather than technician first, and farmer second. We have a long way to go to make this really workable for us, and we will probably experiment with other approaches besides FFS, but at least this first attempt was seen as a positive  step by those involved.