Agriculture Towns Social Organisations and a High Development of Art and Science Marks of
Affiliate 1 - The history, development, and future of agricultural extension
Gwyn E. Jones Chris Garforth
Gwyn East. Jones is Senior Lecturer, Agricultural Extension and Rural Development Department, and Chris Garforth is Senior Lecturer and Caput of the Agronomical Extension and Rural Development Department, both at The University of Reading, United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland.
The term "extension"
The distant origins
Necessary conditions for agricultural extension to evolve
Towards the Modern Era
The birth of modern agricultural extension services
Modern agricultural extension
The time to come
References
Agricultural extension work has a venerable, albeit largely unrecorded, history. It is a meaning social innovation, an important forcefulness in agricultural alter, which has been created and recreated, adjusted and developed over the centuries. Its evolution extends over nearly four grand years, although its modem forms are largely a product of the past two centuries. Today, the organizations and personnel engaged in agronomical extension encompass a various range of socially sanctioned and legitimate activities which seek to overstate and improve the abilities of farm people to adopt more appropriate and often new practices and to adjust to changing conditions and societal needs.
The term "extension"
The employ of the word "extension" derives from an educational evolution in England during the second one-half of the nineteenth century. Effectually 1850, discussions began in the two ancient universities of Oxford and Cambridge near how they could serve the educational needs, well-nigh to their homes, of the rapidly growing populations in the industrial, urban area. Information technology was not until 1867 that a commencement applied attempt was made in what was designated "academy extension," but the action developed quickly to become a well-established movement before the end of the century. Initially, about of the lectures given were on literary and social topics, but by the 1890s agronomical subjects were being covered by peripatetic lecturers in rural areas (Jones, 1994). The growth and success of this work in Britain influenced the initiation of similar activeness elsewhere, particularly in the United states. There, in many states, comparable out-of-college lectures were becoming established by the 1890s (Truthful, 1900, 1928). During the first two decades of this century, the extramural work of the land-grant colleges, concerned with serving the needs of farm families, was to aggrandize dramatically and become formally organized; just the employ of the term "extension" continued and has persisted equally the designation for the work.
The overt utilise of the notion of "extending" relevant and useful information to the adult population at large, yet, predates the university extension motion. Before in the nineteenth century, a British pol, Lord Henry Brougham, an influential advocate of formal eduction for the poor and of mass adult teaching, founded the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in 1826. Its objective was "imparting useful information to all classes of the community, peculiarly to such equally are unable to avail themselves of experienced teachers, or may prefer learning by themselves." The society sought to practice this largely through producing low-priced publications and establishing local committees throughout the country "for extending the object of the Social club" (Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 1827). During its 20 years' existence, agricultural topics were well covered in the society'south publications. Similar, albeit brusk-lived, societies were also established before 1840 in several other European countries, India, Communist china, Malaysia, and the The states (in Virginia) (Grobel, 1933; Smith, 1972).
The distant origins
The dissemination of relevant information and advice to farmers, however, has a long if chequered history prior to the emergence of modem forms of agricultural extension in the nineteenth century.
The starting time known instance was in Mesopotamia (roughly, present-24-hour interval Republic of iraq) effectually 1800 B.C. Archaeologists accept unearthed clay tablets of the time on which were inscribed communication on watering crops and getting rid of rats - of import for mitigating any potential loss of taxation revenue from farmers (Ahmed, 1982, as quoted in Bne Saad, 1990). Some hieroglyphs on Egyptian columns also gave advice on avoiding crop impairment and loss of life from the Nile's floods. An important advance was the beginning of agricultural writings. Though few accept survived, the earliest were written during the ancient Greek and Phoenician civilizations, simply some of them were adjusted by Roman writers. From the second century B.C. to the fourth century A.D., several important Latin texts were written, oft drawing on practical farming feel, which aimed to help Roman landowners to maintain and ameliorate so-estates and their revenues (White, 1970, 1977).
At effectually the same period in imperial Mainland china, early forms of advancing and disseminating agricultural information also began. That landowners and their tenants should improve their product was a matter of business organisation to the state since, from the sixth century B.C. onwards, it relied heavily on land taxes for its revenues. The back up of relevant agronomical research and the dissemination of information and advice had certainly begun by the tardily Han Dynasty (25-220 A.D.). The oldest fully surviving Chinese agricultural treatise, Essential Techniques/or the Peasantry, dating from 535 A.D., aimed to show landowners how to meliorate their estate management through the communication they gave to their tenants. The Sung and Yuan Dynasties (960-1368) with their house local government administrations were notable in organizing and promoting agronomical enquiry, extension piece of work, and the educational activity of agriculture and sericulture, much facilitated past the invention of woodblock press, which allowed agricultural treatises and applied handbooks to be widely distributed. Like activities continued during the succeeding Ming (1368-1644) and Chi'ing (1644-1912) Dynasties, driven non only past the growing population and periodic threats of dearth, but also by the state's recognition of the importance of well-coordinated extension work on agricultural recommendations if the nearly benefit was to be achieved (Perkins, 1969; Elvin, 1973; Bray, 1984; Delman, 1991).
Necessary conditions for agricultural extension to evolve
Autonomously from the importance of farmers and agriculture in the society and economy concerned, several conditions appear to exist necessary for the initiation and organized development of agronomical extension work.
The prime condition is that information has been assembled, systematized, and made available on good or progressive or new agricultural practices suited to a particular environs, and is based on either (or both) the aggregating of experience or findings from research (yet rudimentary). Second, this data is used, among other things, to educate professional agriculturists who may further enlarge or refine this body of knowledge or get active promoters and disseminators of it. Third, an appropriate administrative or organizational construction exists past and within which the dissemination activities may be established and conducted. Fourth, there is a legislative or another official mandate or influential proponent which prescribes or enables that agricultural extension work is desirable and must occur. Fifth, in that location are invariably a variety of antecedents which have attempted protoforms of agricultural information and advice dissemination. In addition, the incidence of disquisitional situations, such as famine, crop failure, soil burnout, or contradistinct economical weather condition or relationships, may create an firsthand cause for initiating the organization of extension work. All or several of these weather have been present in the development of modem forms of agricultural extension.
Towards the Modern Era
The direct antecedents of organized agricultural inquiry and dissemination of its results which occurred in nineteenth century Europe and North America can be traced back to the "renaissance" which began in the fourteenth century. Between 1300 and 1700, European society became transformed from its medieval feudal forms into recognizably modem social systems. It was a period of complex, multistranded development. Along with the growth of national states and European exploration and "discovery" of the rest of the world was the "new learning." This involved not only a fresh appreciation of rediscovered classical writings and fine art forms, but likewise many novel ideas and activities, a spirit of humanism, and rational research. All of this was considerably facilitated past the invention of printing using movable type, usually attributed to Gutenberg around 1450, and the rapid diffusion over Europe of the printing printing, for whose output there existed a set up market.
The primeval known renaissance agricultural text was written in Latin by Pietro de Crescenzi in 1304 and was translated into Italian and French. This became the commencement book on agriculture to be printed in the mid-fifteenth century. Others soon followed, oft based on the former Latin texts or on the collected wisdom of farmers and their families. A well-known example, a compendium of helpful communication in unproblematic poesy and a bestseller in Tudor England, was Thomas Tusser's A hundredth goode pointes of husbandrie, published in 1557 and expanded in 1573 to 5 hundred good points with as many on "goode housewiferie" (Tusser, 1580). Less pop, but of greater significance, were Francis Bacon'due south writings early in the next century based on his observations and scientific experiments on his manor north of London - the beginnings of the application of science and scientific method to agronomics (Russell, 1966).
By the mid-eighteenth century, throughout much of Europe, progressive landowners (frequently aristocrats) and their agents and a few similarly minded farmers were beingness known as "improvers." These, along with some "men of scientific discipline," were the main proponents of agronomical clubs or societies. At their regular meetings and demonstrations, locally and regionally, landowners and leading farmers exchanged ideas and data and discussed farming improvements. Two chief forces underlay the movement. First, many landowners were eager to larn of ways to ameliorate their estates and the product capabilities of their tenants and so as to increment the value of their estates and their rental incomes. Secondly, progress was being made towards modern science and its application to agronomics, peculiarly in agricultural chemistry and establish physiology (Russell, 1966). These societies sought to alter radically the traditional modes of farming past initiating experiments, arranging demonstrations, disseminating data, and advocating the adoption of innovations. It was considered almost a duty by their elite membership to make their initiatives and activities known to "the generality" of farmers through publishing their proceedings and reporting their meetings in newspapers (Hudson, 1972). Although such agronomical societies initially spread slowly - the beginning had been formed at Rezzato virtually Milan in 1548 (Coletti, 1900) - they had become common throughout much of Europe by 1800, and a small number had been established by that year in the young U.s.a. and eastern Canada.
It is not possible, here, to enter into detail on the interactions betwixt a growing scientific knowledge of agriculture and its awarding in practice, the many examples of increasingly widespread agricultural improvement, and the numerous personalities involved in Europe and North America during the century or and then after 1750. Reference must, yet, be made to i figure whose ideas and activities were of pivotal significance to the developments of the time, and later. This was Philipp Emanuel von Fellenberg (1771-1844), who in 1799 purchased the estate of Wylhof, which he renamed Hofwyl, near Bern in Switzerland (Gray, 1952; Guggisberg, 1953). Over the side by side decade or so, he established agronomical schools at Hofwyl for the children of peasants and of the poor and for the aristocracy and their agents. Although not the showtime agricultural schools in Europe, those of von Fellenberg became a model for many more than which were established earlier 1850, especially in Denmark, Frg, France, and the United Kingdom, thus assuring a core of trained agriculturists.
At Hofwyl, von Fellenberg too established an experimental-cum-model farm to examination and develop suitable husbandry practices and technology. He publicised the work at this veritable "educational colony" through a journal and agronomical festivals (shows) at Hofwyl and by welcoming a large number of visitors from all over Europe and maintaining a voluminous correspondence with these and others. Many of his visitors became agile proselytes of his methods, recognizing their practical value in disseminating useful data on agronomics - and other topics. One such notable company was Lord Henry Brougham, referred to earlier, who became the chief publicist of von Fellenberg's work in Britain and whose Society for the Improvidence of Useful Knowledge was an early form of organized "extension."
By the 1820s, most of the elements for creating modem forms of agricultural extension were in existence, although each was to develop considerably during the nineteenth century. A crucial missing element, however, was an effective means past which the "generality" of farmers could be directly given information, advice, and encouragement. This required itinerant agriculturists who could run into farmers in their abode localities, requite instructional talks and demonstrations, advocate superior or new practices, and take discussions with the farmers. The notion of "itinerancy" was not new: since late medieval times, tradesmen and proto-professional person men had travelled through rural areas to serve their clients. The showtime examples of itinerant agricultural lecturers-cum-instructors were in parts of New England and New York in the 1820s (True, 1928) and in France, where a starting time migratory agricultural teacher was appointed in the Gironde in 1837, followed by nine more than in various areas of the land in succeeding years (Boulet due north.d.). During the 1840s, further desultory developments also occurred in the United States, especially in New York, Ohio, and Maryland (True, 1928), while in Württemberg, in southwest Frg, a pasture specialist (Wiesenbaumeister) together with a staff of xviii technicians was employed by the land agronomical society to suggest farmers, landowners, and town administrations on land drainage, irrigation, and improved pasture management (CLVS, 1845).
In Europe, agronomical science was evolving apace by the 1840s, with notable strides existence made in Germany past Justus von Liebig at Giessen, and with the establishment of agronomical experiments at Rothamsted in England in 1843 by John Bennet Lawes and Henry Gilbert. Agricultural societies and their shows were flourishing. Numerous publications and periodicals were aimed at farmers. Agronomical schools, if non commonplace, had been established in almost European countries. Thus a small minority of younger landowners and farmers had received a formal education in their calling, while purposely trained agriculturists were available to exist engaged as estate agents or teachers. Many of the more than progressive landowners employed agents to travel around their estates to urge improved methods on their tenants. The main chemical element necessary to create modern agricultural extension services was for legitimate authorities to establish the necessary organizations - and the germ of this had already been nowadays in France, Federal republic of germany, and the Usa.
The birth of modern agronomical extension services
The first agricultural extension service of a modem kind came into existence as the result of a crisis and the initiative of the occupant of a high office of dominance. The crisis was the outbreak of potato blight in Europe in 1845. In Ireland its effects were particularly severe because the predominantly peasant population relied on potatoes in their nutrition, and "the potato famine" persisted until 1851. The new British viceroy appointed to Ireland in 1847, the Earl of Clarendon, soon after his arrival in Dublin wrote a alphabetic character (Jones, 1982) to the president of the Purple Agronomical Comeback Society of Republic of ireland (founded in 1841), which acted every bit the central society for numerous local agricultural societies. This letter, no less than an official directive, urged the society to appoint itinerant lecturers to travel effectually the most distressed districts to inform and testify small-scale farmers, in simple terms, how to improve their tillage and how to grow nutritious root crops other than potatoes. "Lord Clarendon's applied instructors in husbandry," every bit they became known, were centrally appointed, deployed, and paid and reported weekly to the society in Dublin, with some local command of their activities being exercised by the major landowners in their areas. Over the four years of its existence, the scheme was funded to virtually half its total cost by landowners and charitable donations, with the remainder coming from authorities-controlled funds (Jones, 1979, 1981).
The potato famine also led to consideration being given in Württemberg to employing afoot farm advisers, merely the proposal failed to gain approval (R. Bühler, personal communication). However, from the mid-1850s, first in Württemberg, Hesse, and western Prussia, itinerant agronomical teachers (Wanderlehrer) began to be appointed under the auspices of fundamental agronomical societies. After some x years, the system grew rapidly, influenced in function by the crisis amid vine growers resulting from the devastation acquired past phylloxera aphid infestations, and became formalized (Jones, 1981). Normally, the Wanderlehrer spent the summertime one-half of the year travelling around their districts giving talks, demonstrations, and communication to farmers; during the balance of the year they taught farmers' sons at winter agricultural schools. Although officially they were function of the activities of the agricultural associations, their piece of work was in all cases supported heavily past state funds, and their advice was free to farmers. When the organisation was adopted in the kingdom of Bavaria in 1896, it was as an integral part of the country civil service; the extension workers were grandly titled Royal Agricultural Teachers (Königliche Landwirtschafts-lehrer) (Maier-Bode, 1910).
Past the shut of the nineteenth century, agricultural extension systems modelled to a considerable extent on the German Wanderlehrer had spread: to Denmark from 1870 onwards; to the Netherlands, where a few extension workers (wandelleraren) had been appointed by agricultural societies in the tardily 1840s and 1850s, just had then disappeared before being revived equally a authorities system in the 1890s; to Italia, where the first itinerant agricultural teacher (cattedra ambulante di agricoltura) was appointed in 1886 at Rovigo, near the estuary of the River Po, with many others following in the next decade and funded largely by public donations, the church building, and the banks; to Switzerland; to much of the Austria-hungary; and to Russia.
Meanwhile, in French republic the first national, wholly state-funded agricultural extension service was established in 1879. The few afoot agriculturalists appointed earlier 1848 (referred to earlier) had continued, but they served in merely a very small minority of the land'southward departements. In 1874, the minister of public educational activity in the reforming Third Republic issued a circular letter strongly commending the system and advocating its extension (J. d'Agric. Prat., 1874, p. 257-258). This resulted in an additional thirty-iii itinerant agricultural teachers being appointed by departements over the next 5 years, and a law passed in 1879 officially instituted the function of a department-level itinerant agricultural teacher (professeur departmental d'agronomics). This police was given practical effect by a prescript in 1880 and an explanatory ministerial circular early in 1881 (Min. de fifty'Agric., 1882, p. viii-ix). From then on, each professeur was a state-appointed ceremonious servant. His duties included giving agricultural didactics to trainee primary school teachers. Mainly, however, nether the responsibility of the Ministry of Agriculture, he was to be "nomadic" within his departement, "to keep farmers informed regarding modem discoveries and new inventions which could be applied economically and with advantage," "to be a populariser (vulgarisateur) of progress," "to carry enlightenment into the heart of the countryside." The number of these extension workers grew rapidly, and past the end of the 1880s the whole of France was being served (Jones, 1981).
The growth of agricultural pedagogy and extension work in continental Europe was to have a strong impact on the emergence of comparable activity in the United kingdom. An official commission on technical instruction in the early on 1880s included a detailed review of the European developments (Jenkins, 1884). At the end of the decade, a cluster of enactment's, which established county-based local government, created a board of agriculture, promoted technical (including agronomical) education, and allocated funds for the purpose, enabled agricultural extension work to exist initiated. It was to be office of the services provided by the local authorities authorities. They either employed their own agricultural officer or more unremarkably sponsored lectures and travelling schools on agriculture (especially dairying) equally part of the university extension organization. This meant drawing on the staffs of the agronomical departments which were being created in new institutions of higher didactics. Regime funds were bachelor to support these activities, simply funding also had to be provided by the local county authorities (Jones, 1994). By the turn of the century, such piece of work existed throughout United kingdom.
This system and its underlying legislation, however, did not employ to Republic of ireland (and so entirely a part of the Great britain). At that place, agricultural extension piece of work became established in 1900 as a upshot of the initiative of Horace Plunkett, well known for his advocacy of agricultural cooperation. An official committee in 1896, chaired by Plunkett, reviewed the developments in Europe and Due north America (Report, Recess Committee, 1896) and set out to adapt the various systems to suit Irish atmospheric condition. In 1900, a Department of Agronomics and Technical Pedagogy was established in Dublin, governed by a board of representative Irishmen. This initiated itinerant agricultural teaching, organized within each county every bit in United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland and similarly resourced partly from local and partly from central funds. A vague recollection existed of Lord Clarendon'due south "applied instructors" half a century before, and the championship "itinerant instructors" was applied to the new extension workers, who were expected to provide information and communication, each to be "the guide, philosopher and friend of the existing farmers" (Plunkett, 1901-02, p. 26).
Many visitors and several official delegations from Northward America to Europe, especially from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, reported back on the progress in agricultural research and education, including the itinerant teachers. In the United States and eastern Canada, agricultural societies had become common during the commencement one-half of the century and, unremarkably supported by their country or provincial legislatures, some had at times sponsored itinerant lecturers in agriculture. However, ii other developments after 1850 were of more significance to the development of agricultural extension in the United states. First was the Morrill Act of 1862, signed past President Lincoln during the Civil State of war, which was seminal in the creation of state colleges "of agriculture and the mechanic arts" in the northern U.s.; its land-grant provisions enabled the states to plant and fund their colleges. Second was the commencement at about the same time of the farmers' plant movement. These institutes organized one-or 2-day (and after longer) meetings, which became pop after 1860, bundled by and for farmers.
Both developments had been widely discussed during the previous decade, and their growth over the side by side one-half century was closely interwoven. The visiting speakers at the institutes were largely professors at the state colleges of agriculture, and both depended on the formal support of their state legislatures and of farmers, especially through their agronomical societies (True, 1895, 1928; Kile, 1921). Over the next forty years, these activities were influenced as well by the academy extension move in Britain and the growing interest in adult cocky-improvement (inspired, for example, past the Chautauqua developed pedagogy institution in New York State). Past 1890, when the second Morrill Deed granted federal funds for the establishment of agricultural colleges in the remainder of the United states of america, the farmers' institutes had spread throughout and become a national institution with federal back up and supervision, farther stimulated by the formal establishment of experimental work at the land colleges of agronomics under the 1887 Hatch Human activity. A comparable development of farmers' institutes began in Ontario, Canada, in 1885. These were financially supported past the provincial legislature and spread apace with lecturers mainly from the Ontario Agricultural Higher at Guelph (founded in 1874). A somewhat similar system began in Prince Edward Island (Province of Ontario, 1900; Blackburn & Vist, 1984).
Thus, by the end of the final century, a system of agronomical extension work had become well established in a large function of Northward America. In the United States, the colleges and their leading professors, including several notable proponents of more practical extension piece of work, progressively took over the initiation and organization of the activeness. This culminated in 1914 with the passage of the Smith-Lever Act, establishing the Cooperative Extension Service - a tripartite cooperation of federal, state, and local canton governments, with the state higher as the extension agency - "in order to aid in diffusing among the people of the United States useful and practical data on subjects relating to agriculture and home economics, and to encourage the application of the aforementioned."
In the Southern Hemisphere, extension work also became established along the broad coastal belts of southern and eastern Australia. Several agricultural ("evidence") societies were formed in the second half of the nineteenth century, although their effect was slight, simply as the state administrations became more organized, departments of agriculture were established in the 1870s and 1880s with the aim of developing the potential of their territories. They recognized the importance of agricultural educational activity, influenced by British, Irish, and some American examples whose activities were widely reported in the Australian press. Before the end of the century, under specific land legislation, the departments of agronomics had established agricultural colleges and experimental work in Victoria, South Commonwealth of australia, New South Wales, and Queensland (Black, 1976).
Associated with this development was the official engagement in these states of the kickoff afoot agronomical instructors in the belatedly 1880s. At the same time, considering of the potential importance of milk products, travelling dairy schools were begun, while state exhibitions, especially the Centennial Exhibition in Melbourne in 1888, showed what was possible and gave considerable impetus to farming improvements. The few "regime experts," some from the United Kingdom or the United States, grew in number during the 1890s and the commencement decade of this century, developing the range of the extension work. Its impact and that of the agronomical colleges in their early years was probably slight, but the basis had been laid for further development (Logan, 1984).
Agricultural extension work had too started before 1900 in Japan. Post-obit the Meiji Restoration in 1868, new authoritative structures and various modernizing policies were adopted. Two agricultural colleges were established in the mid-1870s, staffed past Western (mainly European) teachers. At these colleges and regime farms, experimental work was conducted and new practices were tested and developed. At the same time, agricultural fairs and exhibitions were begun, and progressive Japanese farmers gave talks and demonstrations at them. These led to the development of many agricultural societies from 1881 onwards, a "movement" formalized by legislation in 1899. In 1885, the authorities also initiated, at national and prefectural levels, a organisation of appointing experienced farmers as itinerant agricultural lecturers (because the Western "experts" knew piffling about rice husbandry). Supported by the piece of work at government experiment stations, established from 1893, these farmers formed the basis of agricultural extension work. This activity, including the establishment of demonstration farms, was allocated in 1903 to the numerous agronomical societies which, with country funds, appointed agricultural technicians. In 1910, the 1899 law was strengthened; thereafter, farmers were required to belong to a village agricultural society which was linked to a national network and hierarchy of societies, and farmers were compelled to adopt the technical guidance and recommendations of the societies' extension workers - what became known as "forced extension" (Tajima, 1991; Ministry building of Agriculture, 1993).
The development and organization of agricultural extension piece of work was not entirely bars to temperate countries. In a variety of ways, it had also begun in tropical areas, especially in colonial territories. The European colonial powers looked to their overseas territories every bit a source of tropical agronomical products.
Despite a long connectedness with some of the colonial areas, the Europeans remained largely ignorant of many tropical agricultural plants. The solution was to institute experimental and demonstration "botanical gardens." The primeval was opened in 1821 at Peradeniya, Sri Lanka (Ceylon), and two others were established in the country later in the nineteenth century. Smaller ones were also created in several Caribbean islands and some West African territories. During the early on years of this century, some of these developed considerably, although others were short-lived. Those which succeeded provided important sources of agronomical knowledge and innovation and formed the footing for an interest in agronomical societies and agricultural instruction. Some attempts were also undertaken to improve "native agriculture." This was often associated with the cosmos, equally part of the administration, of departments of agronomics and the appointment of professional agriculturists as directors of agriculture.
A central department of agriculture was established in India later on the 1866 Orissa dearth, and the government of Republic of india shortly after resolved to establish departments in each province. However, it was 1905 earlier a central regime directive ordered every province to appoint a full time director of agriculture who should organize agricultural research and demonstration farms with staff who could advise farmers (Mook, 1982). The first British colony to appoint a director of agronomics was Zanzibar in 1896. Of more significance, however, was the creation in 1898 of the Imperial Department of Agronomics for the Westward Indies, with headquarters in Barbados. Before 1914, such departments of agronomics had been created in several African and Southeast Asian territories, besides as in several Caribbean islands (Masefield, 1950). In Sri Lanka, a few agricultural instructors had been appointed about 1880 to work alongside government agents. When in 1904 the Ceylon Agricultural Social club was formed to promote experimental piece of work, it also began an agronomical extension service with the objective of reaching native cultivators (Arasasingham, 1981).Along with school gardens (Willis, 1922), the extension workers were considered an effective way of demonstrating improved cultivation practices to villagers. Similar developments also occurred in the Caribbean.
In most tropical African territories, the European interaction with native agriculture was minimal before 1914. The "scramble for Africa" had been mainly in the late nineteenth century, and the young departments of agriculture, where they existed, were largely involved in administrative duties. Before 1914, withal, agricultural instruction was given in most regime-assisted schools and at 4 agricultural stations in Ghana (the Golden Coast) (Lucas, 1913). In addition, missionaries often undertook agronomical education, with demonstration and improvement activities, alongside their religious piece of work. The church farms (fermes-chapelles) begun in 1895 by Jesuits in the then Belgian Congo (de Failly, 1970) were copied by missionaries of other persuasions in many other areas.
Mod agricultural extension
In the early on years of this century, extension services were in their formative stage; they were relatively small-scale in calibration and express in the telescopic of their work and contact with farmers, and their organization was frequently somewhat haphazard fifty-fifty though based on legislation. They were organized predominantly either past primal or local governments, or past agronomical colleges, usually in close association with experiment stations, or by farmers' organizations (agronomical societies, cooperatives, farmers' unions, or chambers of agriculture), or combinations of these parent bodies. As the century has progressed, the organizations have matured. Changes take often occurred to their parent affiliations, regime funding has go relatively more important, their objectives have become broader, especially in "the North," and the extension workers have become better trained and more professional. In addition, several other kinds of organizations accept developed comparable work: agriculture-related commercial companies; agricultural commodity marketing boards, concerned to assure the supply and quality of their specific product; agricultural development projects, many of considerable territorial calibration; and a diversity of nongovernmental organizations (specially religious and charitable) involved in agricultural and rural development.
As agricultural extension organizations have grown and changed, they have invariably become more bureaucratic with distinct hierarchical structures. The work of dispersed extension workers had to be administered and controlled and then that i or more than levels of intermediary structure (for example, commune, region) take been created betwixt the field-level agents and their headquarters. Thus the management of extension activities has become a major preoccupation, and many organizations have been open to the criticism of being meridian heavy and top-down in their approach. However, with funding derived largely from national revenues (or international donors), senior managers have necessarily had to account for and justify their organization'southward activities. This has been equally pronounced in the North as in the S where, after colonial territories gained their independence, extension work has commonly been rein-vented and staffed by nationals under the aegis of their new administrations (usually ministries of agriculture).
During the past quarter century, the piece of work of extension services has often become more than diversified. In the less developed countries, the principal focus remains on agricultural (mainly food) production, but there has been a growing recognition of the need to attain, influence, and do good the multitudes of small-scale, resource-poor farmers. Strong efforts have been made in this management, notably through the training and visit system. Among the commercial farmers of the North, a major problem has get surplus production, with farmers facing economic and policy pressures to restrict it. Associated with intensive production methods, many bug and problems regarding environmental deterioration and livestock welfare take also arisen. Thus these have become important aspects of extension work, particularly socioeconomic guidance which focusses both on means by which farmers might maintain their income levels from their resources (for case, introduction of novel crops or livestock and involvement in various rural enterprises) and on the ways of assuring the longer term welfare of farmers and their families. Agricultural extension services are thus adding a strong social dimension to their activities.
Agronomical extension has now become recognised equally an essential machinery for delivering information and advice equally an "input" into modem farming. Since commercial farmers tin can derive direct financial benefits from these inputs, in that location is a tendency towards the privatization of the extension organizations, often equally parastatal or quasigovernmental agencies, with farmers being required to pay for services which they had previously received free of charge. This trend is strong in the North, and in that location are examples of information technology beginning in the South.
The pace of modify in the organization, functions, strategies, and approaches of agricultural extension is clearly accelerating.
The future
The need for agricultural and rural information and advisory services is probable to intensify in the foreseeable time to come. In much of the world, agriculture faces the challenge of keeping pace with rapidly increasing population with few reserves of potentially cultivable land. Farmers volition have to become more efficient and specialized.
From government perspectives, any priority is given to production, extension will remain a cardinal policy tool for promoting ecologically and socially sustainable farming practices.
Some of the most promising recent developments in extension methodology have occurred where the key agenda is environmental or is concerned with equity, for example in the need for the joint direction of forests by professionals and local woods users and in integrated pest management. A consistent theme running through the innovative approaches being used, such as participatory rural appraisal (Chambers, 1993), is a fundamental change in what are the corresponding roles of extension agent and clients. The agent is no longer seen every bit the skillful who has all the useful information and technical solutions; the clients' own noesis and ingenuity, individually and collectively, are recognized as a major resources; solutions to local problems are to be developed in partnership between agent and clients. Since the calibration at which extension support is required is thus often larger than the individual farm, extension workers need new skills of negotiation, disharmonize resolution, and the nurturing of emerging community organizations (Garforth, 1993; Smith, 1994).
The futurity is also probable to witness a reversal of recent trends towards bureaucratization within hierarchical extension services and a reduction in their levels of public funding. Moreover, a rapid increment can be expected in the use of information applied science in support of extension. The forces for modify in these areas (meet Rivera & Gustafson, 1991) volition come from 4 main directions.
Economic and Policy Climate
With the collapse during the past decade of socialist forms of economical organization, the (dominant) part of the public sector in national economies has go questionable, with a strengthening tendency to reduce levels of public spending. Thus regime extension services and those which are largely publicly financed are, and will keep to be, under pressure to go more than efficient, to reduce their expenditure and staff, and to pass on (some of) the costs of provision to their clients who direct benefit financially. This is peculiarly the case in countries where the farm population forms a small minority and agricultural product is in surplus. The instance is weaker, but non absent-minded, in less adult countries where farming households form a loftier proportion of the total population and where increasing nutrient production is still important. Thus charging clients for services is likely to get more than widespread, while governments volition find it attractive to contract out the operation of services to the private or the voluntary sector.
Social Context in Rural Areas
In the future, rural populations will undoubtedly be progressively meliorate educated, while their exposure to the mass media will continue to reduce their isolation and disengagement from information, ideas, and an sensation of their situation inside a national and international context. However, this exposure volition not reduce the need for extension. Rather, given the changing demands on agronomical producers from population growth, increasing urbanization, legislative changes, and market place requirements, the more than knowledgeable farming population volition crave different kinds of extension services. Social and economic trends within rural areas will therefore necessitate more than highly trained, specialized, and technically competent workers, who also know where to obtain relevant information and trouble solutions and various provision and organizational forms (Moris, 1991; Hayward, 1990) to replace monolithic authorities extension agencies. These agencies will demand to recognize and serve dissimilar types of clients defined not in terms of "adopter categories" only of access to markets, caste of commercialization, and relative dependence on agronomics for family income and welfare.
Systems Cognition
A recognition of the locale-specific nature of farming systems and the agronomical data systems which support them is an important source of the pressure level towards the debureaucratization and devolution of extension services. This recognition besides implies that extension workers and farmers be jointly involved in the verification and adaptation of new engineering science, and thus that the extension workers respect farmers every bit experimenters, developers, and adapters of technology and devote more free energy on communication within their local areas. The devolution of extension services to go local organizations is a reasonable corollary of this. Developments in mass media engineering, already apparent over a decade agone (Garforth, 1986), will continue to support this localization of extension attempt.
Information Technology
The continuing rapid development of telecommunications and computer-based information engineering science (IT) is probably the biggest factor for change in extension, one which will facilitate and reinforce other changes. There are many possibilities for the potential applications of the engineering science in agricultural extension (FAO, 1993; Zijp, 1994). IT will bring new information services to rural areas over which farmers, every bit users, will have much greater control than over current information channels. Even if every farmer does not have a calculator terminal, these could become readily available at local information resources centres, with computers carrying skillful systems to help farmers to brand decisions. However, it will non make extension workers redundant. Rather, they will be able to concentrate on tasks and services where human interaction is essential - in helping farmers individually and in small groups to diagnose bug, to interpret data, and to apply their pregnant (Leeuwis, 1993).
The future will call for more able, more independent, more client-oriented extension workers. The accent will exist on the quality of interaction between agent and client rather than on the movement of "messages" through a hierarchical system.
Flexibility and adaptability will be seen as virtues rather than aberrations. Paradoxically, these trends will bring united states full circle to the early manifestations of modem extension in Europe. The afoot agricultural teachers, unencumbered by large bureaucracies and tall hierarchies, volition detect their modem counterparts in the computer-carrying extension workers who are at ease helping farmers to identify the data they need in order to realize the potential of their farming operations. Looking back, we can regard the period from 1970 to 1995 every bit a necessary just expensive stage in the evolution of extension systems, after which extension agents were able to settle down to their main job - bringing together the expertise of farmers and the best available scientific noesis to develop farms and local agricultural economies.
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