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The Farmer Field School (FFS) is a widely used method seeking to educate farmers to adapt agricultural decisions to diverse and variable field conditions. Out of 218 screened studies, 65 were selected to review the impact of the FFS. An analytical framework was developed with effects (outputs, outcomes and impacts) arranged according to the human, social, natural and financial domains. Impacts on non-participants of the FFS were addressed as peripheral effects. The FFS demonstrated its potential to enhance human, social, natural and financial capital of rural communities. Human capital was built in the form of critical thinking, innovation, confidence, and quality of life. Effects on social capital included mutual trust, bonding, collective action, networking, and emancipation. Natural capital was enhanced through improvements in field practices, food production, agricultural diversification, and food security. Financial capital was enhanced through increased income and profits, savings and loans schemes, with a potential to reduce poverty. The available body of evidence was unbalanced across the capital domains, providing high coverage of the natural domain but low coverage of the human, social and financial domains. In-depth case studies are needed to elucidate the interactions between livelihood assets, and the influences of the policy, institutional and external environment, in order to adjust FFS interventions aiming to optimize their impacts. Considering the positive effects the FFS can have on rural livelihoods, the FFS has potential to contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. However, quality assurance of the FFS and a balanced evaluation across the capital domains require attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When anthropologists interviewed Honduran and Nepali smallholders in the mid-1990s, they were told that 'Insects are a terrible mistake in God's creation' and 'There's nothing that kills them, except for insecticides'. Even growers who maintained a close bond with nature were either entirely unaware of natural pest control, or expressed doubt about the actual value of these services on their farm. Farmers' knowledge, beliefs and attitudes towards pests and natural enemies are of paramount importance to the practice of biological control, but are all too often disregarded. In this study, we conduct a retrospective analysis of the extent to which social science facets have been incorporated into biological control research over the past 25 years. Next, we critically examine various biological control forms, concepts and technologies using a 'diffusion of innovations' framework, and identify elements that hamper their diffusion and farm-level uptake. Lastly, we introduce effective observation-based learning strategies, such as farmer field schools to promote biological control, and list how those participatory approaches can be further enriched with information and communication technologies (ICT). Although biological control scientists have made substantial technological progress and generate nearly 1000 papers annually, only a fraction (1.4%) of those address social science or technology transfer aspects. To ease obstacles to enhanced farmer learning about biological control, we describe ways to communicate biological control concepts and technologies for four divergent agricultural knowledge systems (as identified within a matrix built around 'cultural importance' and 'ease of observation'). Furthermore, we describe how biological control innovations suffer a number of notable shortcomings that hamper their farm-level adoption and subsequent diffusion, and point at ways to remediate those by tactical communication campaigns or customized, (ICT-based) adult education programs. Amongst others, we outline how video, smart phones, or tablets can be used to convey key ecological concepts and biocontrol technologies, and facilitate social learning. In today's digital era, cross-disciplinary science and deliberate multi-stakeholder engagement will provide biocontrol advocates the necessary means to bolster farmer adoption rates, counter-act surging insecticide use, and restore public trust in one of nature's prime services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]