The Meaning to Research and Extension

Abstract

THE state agricultural experiment stations and the state agricultural extension services historically have been characterized by three interesting and significant patterns of behavior. 1. number of soul searching and horizon broadening evaluations, with resultant shifts in emphasis, have been made. To my knowledge, no institutions or agencies have subjected themselves to more frequent, regular, and intensive evaluations of their programs. Mount Weather Agreement of the 1930's; the Scope Report, made public in 1958; and in late 1968, People and a Spirit, are a few examples. These reports have centered mainly upon extension. In research, the series of joint task force reports being undertaken by the USDA and the state experiment stations are the latest studies. One of the recent releases in the series was A National Program of Research for Foreign Agricultural Trade and Economic Development. Thirty-two task forces are at work on these reports. 2. There have been almost continuous warnings of approaching doom for research and extension from many prophets, originating from sources both endogenous and exogenous to the land-grant universities. few choice morsels follow. Shortly after the passage of the Smith-Lever Act in 1914, establishing the extension service, one of the deans of agriculture warned beautifully but ill-advisedly, The agricultural oceans will be strewn with the wrecks of county agents. Around 1960, the Hardin County Times in Iowa Falls, Iowa, editorialized, They're [the farmers] no longer satisfied with having their adult education program [referring to extension] built around the latest bulletin on blight, Bang's disease, or how to cobble a dressing table out of a peach crate. In 1965, Bonnen envisioned a tombstone with an inscription befitting the environment, The Agricultural Establishment of the United States: It's Promise Exceeded Its Performance, and Falling Into Social Irrelevance It Took Its Own Useless Life [1, p. 1129]. Before the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant