The bare winter fields, endless piney woods, leafless orchards, and hardwood bottoms pass in a blur under the grey winter skies. Each year, the lead-up to the growing season finds my colleagues and I in a truck along the backroads of Georgia for what will be the first of many days over a two-month stretch traveling to a series of small towns. We will speak to gatherings of farmers in seventeen different counties throughout southern Georgia. Along the way we will travel 1750 miles. Pasted together it would be a length of road long enough to drive from Georgia to Salt Lake City. We will spend a total of 36 hours on the road. At every stop, each of us will speak for 15-20 min. We will shake hands and have side conversations with those in attendance. We will answer and ask questions. We will consume large quantities of barbeque, fried chicken, green beans, and pecan pie.
In an age of Zoom meetings and video conferencing, this over-the-top effort for face-to-face gatherings may seem irrational and inefficient. In fact, it is, when viewed from a certain perspective. But the illogical bent of our travels goes far beyond the superficial purpose.
I moonlight as a farmer, but in my day job I work as an extension specialist for pecans and a professor of Horticulture at the University of Georgia. Most days I am at work in an orchard somewhere identifying problems and solutions for farmers or collecting data, or I am at my desk crunching numbers or writing. But this is the meeting season. It is a job that fits my nostalgic sensibilities. It is also an enigma to most people. I myself find it hard to believe sometimes that I have made a career of this job. I am part of a network of people throughout the state and indeed, throughout the nation, whose job it is to help farmers and the public at large. As ridiculous as it sounds, I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you.
The seeds of the Extension service were planted in 1862 when President Lincoln signed the Morrill Act, establishing the Land Grant College system. The law gave the states public lands, which were to be sold or used to generate funds for the establishment of colleges where the agricultural and mechanical arts would be taught. Many of these became the large public universities that today serve as the flagship schools of their respective states. In 1887, the Hatch Act provided federal funds to the states to establish agricultural experiment stations under the direction of these schools, where agricultural research would be conducted. In 1890, a number of historically black colleges and universities were added to the land grant mission.
By 1914, Congress recognized a need to extend the knowledge gained through the colleges and experiment stations to farmers and homemakers living far out into the rural countryside, people who did not have the time or resources to attend college or meetings at the experiment stations. As a result, the Smith-Lever Act was passed, establishing the Extension Service as a partnership between federal, state, and county governments. At the time, over 50% of Americans lived in rural areas and 30% of the workforce was related to agriculture. Soon, a local extension office was rooted in almost every county across the nation and became part of the fabric of local communities.
Though a noble idea, Extension has been used, as author Wendell Berry points out, as a blunt tool of the “get big or get out” policies of former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz. It was a policy that relied on globalism to be successful. As a result, the advent of the economy of scale destroyed countless local communities, and in many places Extension itself has suffered in this dismantling.
After 1960 the number of farms in the U.S. began a steep decline, largely due to the increased efficiency stemming from the very knowledge and mechanization the colleges and extension service provided and promoted. Today fewer than 2% of Americans farm for a living, and only 17% of the population live in rural areas. The political power of rural places has dwindled. Not surprisingly, Extension’s funding has diminished, and the county extension offices in many states have been closed or consolidated to serve specific regions of their respective states. As a result, Extension has lost some of its influence to the agribusiness industry.
Yet agriculture still touches all of our lives at some level, creating a need for the unbiased, research-driven focus of the extension service, and here in Georgia there remains an extension office in almost all 159 counties. In Georgia, at least, the value of locality and community is taken into serious account through its extension work.
People in my part of the world are still familiar with the county agent. But if you’ve lived on concrete all your life, your only exposure to a county agent may have been the bumbling Hank Kimball on an episode of Green Acres. Therefore, you may not know exactly what a county agricultural agent does. In short, they help people.
The county agent’s territory lies within a county or series of counties, where they are responsible for answering a broad range of questions from farmers, homeowners, government officials, and citizens from all walks of life. Through the 4-H program, they help and instruct hundreds of children within their communities. Most county agents today have master’s degrees and must develop a broad knowledge of topics as varied as the proper pH of a fish pond, the life cycle of the pepper weevil, the most suitable turfgrass for shaded lawns, how to determine when peanuts are ready to be dug from the earth, how to test a well for contamination, and how to rid a home of mold. They hold classes, workshops, field trials, and club meetings on all these topics and more to improve the lives of their neighbors.
Random stuff I find interesting and you may not.
