Jul 5, 2011

Extension’s financial foundation has shifted over the years

Through its college of agriculture, experiment stations and Extension offices, a land-grant university can greatly aid its home state’s fruit and vegetable growers, providing them with practical, unbiased advice to help them stay in business.

But when its funding base erodes, the university has a much harder time doing its job and is forced to rely on new sources of revenue – which can shift its priorities away from helping growers.

In a nutshell, that’s the story of Extension in the last few decades, according to numerous sources.

Dwindling funds

A 2006 report analyzing Cooperative Extension System (the partnership between USDA and land-grant universities that ties state Extension services together) funding from 1970 to 2004 said the system’s funding model – split between federal, state and local governments – worked for a long time, but in the last decade or two it’s been stretched to its limits by increased demands without a concurrent increase in public funding.

The report – “Joint Task Force on Managing a Changing Portfolio” – was written by a group of Extension directors, administrators and USDA staff. They wrote that the federal government allocated $131.7 million to the Cooperative Extension System (CES) in 1970. By 2004, the federal contribution was $439.1 million – calculating for inflation, about $200 million less than it was in 1970.

Meanwhile, CES had grown since 1970. The system linked 104 educational institutions and approximately 3,150 county administrative units by 2004, according to the report.

Numbers from the report highlight Extension’s funding shift: In 1972, federal, state and local contributions to Extension were 41 percent, 40 percent and 18 percent, respectively. In 2003, the original land-grant universities (those given that status in 1862) reported that 17 percent of their budgets were from federal sources, 40 percent from states, 22 percent from local contributions, 17 percent from grants and gifts and 3.6 percent from user fees.

Those numbers show clearly that grant-based funding has made up much of the shortfall in federal funding – a mixed blessing, according to the report.

“While competitive, grant-based funding has significant merits, a net effect of these inter-related trends is significant erosion of the basic national infrastructure of Extension educators, state specialists and county agents,” the report stated. “All effective Extension learning requires a basic human infrastructure, and without sustained public resources, the local reach of Extension can be severely curtailed or impaired.”

In many states, public groups have mobilized to raise private funds to support popular Extension programs. Sometimes, nonprofit groups end up managing programs that have been cut, or create new programs with private funds. The report said CES must fully utilize such private assistance, but also must avoid any conflicts of interest it might bring about.

Changing delivery

Gone are the days when every county had a fruit or vegetable Extension agent who could regularly visit neighboring farms. Decreased funding has consolidated such services, aided by new technologies that have made communication more efficient – and also have taken away the personal touch Extension used to have, according to numerous sources.

“While the on-site visit and the field day are still core elements of Extension agriculture and natural resources programs, new techniques are rapidly overtaking the more traditional methods,” according to the report. “Extension now makes ready use of online publications, toll-free numbers and other diverse electronic media.”

Tim Smith, an Extension tree fruit educator in Washington state, used to visit growers more often, but he considers farm visits an extremely inefficient way of getting things done when you’re dealing with thousands of acres.

In a 2007 interview, Smith said he concentrated most of his activities in a three-county region stretching from Wenatchee to the Canadian border, a major fruit-growing region. When Smith started working in Wenatchee in 1982, there were three Extension agents serving the region. A few years ago, he was the only one left – serving 1,200 fruit growers on about 65,000 acres, he said.

To highlight the advantages of modern communication, Smith recalled a phone conversation he had with a grower. Smith had asked the grower to send a photo of a problem he was having, so the grower – who was sitting in his truck in the field – took a digital picture, put it in his computer and sent it to the educator, who was in his office. Thanks to the picture, Smith was able to tell the grower what his problem was. The grower could have been in New York and it would have happened just as fast, Smith said.

Extension’s methodology has changed over time to keep up with changing demographics, but its mission is more or less the same, said George McManus Jr. in a 2006 interview.
“Today, they do a lot of activities beyond what I did when I was there.”

McManus started working for Michigan State University (MSU) Extension in 1956. Ten years later, he was named director of Grand Traverse County Extension. He served in that post until 1982.

These days, Extension has a broader base of knowledge to work with and must provide information on a wider range of subjects. At the same time, however, county agents – or educators, as they’re called today – are more specialized. In the old days, agents were expected to cover all subjects. Now, to stay ahead, one agent has to be a grape specialist, another an apple specialist and another has to know everything about cherries, McManus said.

On the other hand, if you hang around long enough you can become an expert in a lot of areas. When Smith started in Washington state, his initial responsibility was pest management. Eventually, he became responsible for horticultural subjects, and also learned a thing or two about weeds, soils and agricultural engineering.

“You grow with the job,” he said.

As in other states, Washington’s land-grant system is relying more and more on competitive grants and contracts to keep it going. Such funding does wonders to fill needed gaps, but pursuing it can become an end in itself and take valuable time away from the research, education and other activities educators need to focus on in order to be useful to growers, according to numerous sources.

Smith spends a lot of his time doing applied research – something he can’t avoid.

“Without applied research, we get no grants,” he said. “Without grants, we can’t do anything.”

Recent shifts

In response to shrinking federal and state funding, MSU has been in the process of realigning its college of agriculture, its experiment stations and its Extension programs in the last couple of years. Director Thomas Coon said MSU Extension is now organized around four key concepts, one of which is agriculture. The others are “green” energy, health care and preparing tomorrow’s work force.

There was a proposal last year to merge the horticulture, crop and soil sciences and plant pathology departments into one mega-department within MSU’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, but that option is not being pursued at this time. The college is looking for other ways to save money, such as improving the productivity and efficiency of its services, said Doug Buhler, interim dean.

In New York state, Cornell Cooperative Extension is shifting toward regional coverage, as opposed to the traditional county-by-county approach. Fruit and vegetable Extension teams now stretch across multiple counties. Such a system is more efficient in many ways, but the difficulty is that much Extension funding comes from county governments, which want to maintain local control and local programs, said Jan Nyrop, senior associate dean of Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS).

Over the last three years, the state contribution to the CALS budget has dropped by 25 percent. The university has made its own budget cuts, too. Still, CALS is doing everything it can to preserve the programs that are important to its ag constituents, Nyrop said.

To save money, CALS has combined resources from its Ithaca and Geneva campuses. Each campus formerly had its own entomology, horticulture and food science department, each of which operated independently from its counterpart at the other campus. Now, each department is a single administrative unit – though with programs and facilities still located at both campuses, Nyrop said.

CALS also is in the midst of closing its education department and transferring the faculty to other departments, he said.

A decade ago, CALS paid for the technicians who worked with and for some faculty members, but that financial support is being phased out. Losing such support raises concerns about the college’s ability to maintain applied research in its Extension programs, but it’s one of the painful decisions that had to be made. Hopefully, fruit and vegetable industry partners will continue to cover more of those expenses, Nyrop said.

By Matt Milkovich