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(74) Extension: A Modern Day Pony Express?
David Drake, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI
Ben West, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS
Andy Londo, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS
Session: General session - Friday
The Pony Express and Extension are two completely dissimilar organizations linked by a common problem: survival in changing times. The Smith-Lever Act of 1914 established the Cooperative Extension Service for the purpose of “diffusing among the people of the United States useful and practical information on subjects relating to agriculture, home economics, and rural energy”. Since then, much has changed. Just over 76 million individuals lived in the United States in 1900, with 42% of the population employed as farmers. As of 2007, America’s population had increased to 300 million people, with only 2% of the population earning a living on the farm. More telling, about 80% of America’s population now lives in a suburban/urban environment. Despite these trends in our society and agriculture, Extension remains rooted in the past. At a time when baseline funding to support the Extension system is threatened with extinction, we need to critically think about how to maintain Extension’s sustainability and relevance well into the 21st Century. Extension has slowly evolved throughout its history, but we argue that more dramatic transformations must occur to ensure its future. Within this context, we recommend that Extension refine and redefine its niche, increase its visibility via aggressive marketing and advertising campaigns, create more effective and relevant methods of information transfer, and improve and increase creative thinking about funding. As uncomfortable as it may be to critically examine ourselves, we need to ensure that Extension is as relevant and important today and into the future as it was at the time the Smith-Lever Act was passed.
David Drake
Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology
1630 Linden Dr.
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison, WI, 53706
Phone: (608) 890-0445
Fax: (608) 262-6499
ddrake2@wisc.edu