Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 8, 1995 TAG: 9510100041
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PHILIP R. BREEZE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In this era in which deriding the government and anyone who would choose to work for it is so popular, the assertion that Extension, and the land-grant university system, is the greatest bureaucratic accomplishment since the building of the Roman aqueducts or the Great Wall of China may be an unpopular view. But that is my view.
Humans have been tending animals and growing crops for more than 5,000 years. Yet since Abraham Lincoln signed the federal land-grant act in 1862 and created the "people's universities," crop yields around the world have quadrupled, septupled and more. That is no coincidence.
Lincoln made the production of an abundant, affordable and wholesome food supply a national concern. The industrial revolution was luring workers from the farm to the factory, and the continued production of food was a matter of critical national concern. Governments act legitimately only when they act to address matters that affect a society as a whole, not a suckling segment that refuses to he weaned.
The land-grant act of 1862 provided for the establishment of a college of agricultural and mechanical sciences in each state. Shortly after that, the experiment stations were created to foster the development of new knowledge, and in 1914 the Cooperative Extension Service was created to carry that knowledge to farmers and homemakers in each county of the United States. It is important to note that home economics and the skills of managing a family and a household were as prominently mentioned in the founding language as was agriculture.
Even more important, Extension was created to address a social issue of importance and relevance to all Americans - the assurance of an abundant, affordable, wholesome food supply. With the possible exception of Canada, the United States is the only nation in the history of the world in which no one ever had to wonder whether, when they went to the grocery store, there would be food there. In America, the availability of food reliably assumed to be wholesome is more a given than the availability of clean air to breath or fresh water to drink.
Friends, that's no accident. County agents who worked hard to win the trust and confidence of their neighbors so they would accept new ideas, and who worked closely with scientists and researchers at the land-grant universities to learn those new ideas, made it all possible - and in a typical work week of only about 75 hours. The nation owes them a monument, a big monument.
But today, Extension is dying, as evidenced by the restructuring plan outlined recently in this newspaper. It is easy to understand why. I picture the last commander of a horse-cavalry unit and the last captain of a sail-powered warship being told they are no longer needed. No amount of recounting how well and faithfully they have served will prevent their eventual demise. Their intensely focused dedication, the very trait that made them so valuable in times past, is what prevented them from seeing the changing times breaking over them, and from taking steps to prepare for the future as it arrived. It's enough to make you cry, and I have.
But that is the case with Extension. Food, and plenty of it, is a given in America. Farming is less and less a family operation and more and more an industry. Taxpayers ask why research and development for this industry should be any more their responsibility than it is for Chrysler or K-Mart.
Extension is dying, but it needn't. The Army did not disappear with the disappearance of the horse-mounted cavalry, and the Navy did not go down with the last sail-driven warship. That is because those organizations did not confuse their processes with their purpose.
The Army did not exist to care for horses, and put armed men atop them, nor did the Navy exist to create a large market for sail makers. They did not confuse what they did, or even how they did it, with why they did it. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the leadership of Extension across the nation, or here in Virginia.
While Extension has long involved working with farmers (and homemakers and youth in the 4-H program), Extension clearly was not created for the purpose of working with farmers. Extension was created to address a matter of critical national concern at the time - the supply of that affordable, abundant and wholesome food. That mission is now sufficiently assured that it is no longer a legitimate matter of national concern.
Youth hovering on the threshold of dropping out of school; poorly nourished teen mothers and their children for lack of knowledge, not money; dual-income families teetering on the brink of bankruptcy - these are matters of national concern today. Extension is a community-rooted bureaucracy well-suited for addressing those concerns. Remember, family and homemaking skills are as prominently featured in the legislation that created the Extension Service as is agriculture. Until recently, most counties were home to a home-economics agent as well as an agriculture agent.
As I said, 82 is my lucky number. Extension in Virginia will mark its renaissance in its 82nd year if those who control it will recognize that the Army no longer breeds bellicose Belgians, the Navy is no longer the world's greatest consumer of canvas - and the greatest concerns to the nation as a whole are no longer the provision of food, but the ability to afford it, knowledge about which of it to purchase and how to prepare it, and the ability to get it safely home.
At Virginia Tech, the leadership of Extension in Virginia should be removed from the College of Agriculture and placed in the College of Human Resources, where today's greatest social needs clearly require that it be. As the leader of a state-supported institution, Tech President Paul Torgersen must direct the resources at his command toward the greatest common need. Providing free research and development to a continually narrowing industry, at the expense of a growing, greater public need, is an abrogation of his responsibility.
Philip R. Breeze is former associate director of university relations for extension at Virginia Tech.
by CNB