The Changing Professional Role of the Extension Economist: Discussion

Abstract

Wallace has given an administrative view of the changing professional role of the extension economist. Rather than critique that administrative viewpoint specifically, this comment deals with the same subject from the viewpoint of an agricultural economist in a state extension specialist role. The two views combined give a better overall picture of potential changes than could either alone. It is tempting to begin this comment with an enumeration of the many technological changes currently in progress that will have far-reaching implications for extension programming. But, implications of telecommunications advances alone would quickly exhaust the available space. Instead, it may be more useful to deal in general terms with a broad range of factors that will create both constraints and opportunities for extension economists in the future. The changing role of the extension professional will be defined by the ways in which the profession deals with those future constraints and opportunities. First, it may be useful to define the professional role of extension economists. There may be legitimate disagreement on the adequacy of any single definition. But, it would seem that any definition of role should begin with a definition of the profession within which that role is performed. Agricultural economics is a profession which combines the discipline of economics with the field of agriculture. In more recent years, the field of application has been expanded to include rural resource development as well as agriculture. In general, professions apply principles and concepts from the physical and social sciences to solve problems and exploit opportunities. Agricultural economists bring the full set of economic principles and concepts to bear in their specific field of application. Thus, agricultural economics is a profession rather than a subdiscipline of economics. The term extension identifies a set of processes used by a subsector of the agricultural economics profession. Extension agricultural economics is not a separate profession. The Smith-Lever Act of 1962 is the current author-