Teaching agricultural methods and practices, in class and in the field.
Specific training and local clinics are helpful in initiating new activities.
In Germany, Stienkens Hof, the Farm for Active Living and Learning, organizes meetings and seminars on organic gardening and farming.
Farm Clinics are offered to farm families by The Syndicate Agricultural Foundation of Karnataka, India. Each Farm Clinic covers one or a few villages, has a local office which serves as a base for a field assistant, and is linked to a branch of the Syndicate Bank, the foundation's sponsor. The main objective of the Farm Clinic is to help selected families from among the poor to improve their social and economic position. Through its efforts, the Farm Clinic also seeks to improve the villages where it operates. The clinic achieves its objectives through the following steps: (1) One or two villages are selected for its area of operation; (2) Families in the village considered poor are selected and surveyed in detail; (3) A family development plan is prepared for each family; (4) Based on the family development plan, the family is helped to obtain financial and other assistance like the supply of inputs, raw materials and marketing facility; (5) Educational programmes are organized to teach the selected families vocational skills; and (6) Community action for establishing various facilities needed by the village people and for improving the environment is organized.
You start where the people are and with what they are feeling about their needs. This includes working with a variety of structures and alternatives and also includes new learnings about what can actually be done, particularly in their situation. Training should not be done, away from the farmer, but at the village level. You do should not do the demonstration at the training centre, where the field has been ploughed by the tractor. Come down to the village level where the farmer has to use animals. Then he will see it as the job he has to do every day.