The Farmer Field School: a method for enhancing the role of rural communities in malaria control ?

Malaria has major and multifaceted linkages with agriculture, both in a rural and peri-urban context [1,2]. Agricultural environments provide conditions well suited for anopheline breeding, with clear, temporary water bodies coinciding with the time of crop cultivation, and human and animal hosts at flying distance. Clearing of land for agriculture opens up breeding habitats for heliophilic vectors, whereas "informal" smallholder farming systems located near natural water sources, such as streams and rivers, open up vector breeding opportunities. Moreover, mounting evidence indicates that the widespread agricultural use of broad-spectrum insecticides contributes to insecticide-resistance in mosquito vectors [3,4]. This is expected to reduce the efficacy of indoor residual spraying and insecticide-treated bednets, although the efficacy of the latter intervention has, so far, only been marginally unaffected even in areas with high frequency of the kdr gene in the vector population [5]. In addition, agriculture generates income and, thus, influences living conditions, which can affect the transmission and severity of disease. Malaria, in turn, impedes human workforce output and agricultural production, especially at times that agricultural activities peak (i.e. the time of irrigation or after rains). In the African context, this effect is exemplified by the dual role of women in agricultural activities and as family caregiver.Central in all these crucial linkages is the position of farmers – who create the agricultural environments, implement the cultivation practices, decide on agrochemical inputs, and who attain, as a result of these actions, a certain living standard. Addressing the malaria-agriculture interface requires, therefore, a broad interdisciplinary and integrated approach that involves local communities and more than one public sector. The importance of active participation and empowerment of rural communities to the effectiveness of malaria control interv