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What effect will the shrinking/disappearing Extension budget have?
ANSWER: We here at the Paupack Blueberry Farm have never relied on financial help from the Extension agency. We operate on tight budgets, hard work, customer service and close family ties year in and year out.
Kevin Coutts
Coutts Berry Farms
Paupack, Pa.
ANSWER: University of Illinois Extension provides valued, research-based information, along with workshops, to fruit and vegetable growers in Illinois. With the growth of the slow food, buy local, eat fresh trend, both commercial and home gardeners can benefit from the information provided by the Extension service.
I have benefited from U of I Extension information since 1981. We need this resource. To answer your question directly, a decrease in Extension budgets would not affect my livelihood. It would make research on pesticides, cultivars, etc., more difficult.
James Orr
The Berry Patch
Buffalo, Ill.
ANSWER: This is my second year in berry and nut farming. I have used my county's Extension office a lot – Master Gardener classes, soil testing and analysis, information on trees and vines and the best places to get information on a number of subjects.
I would really miss their services/knowledge/insight if they were not around.
Joseph E. Culbreth
Berry & Nut Farm
Coeur d’Alene, Idaho
ANSWER: No effect.
Bob Mathison
Stemilt Growers
Wenatchee, Wash.
ANSWER: The Bayh-Dole act (about 1980) that allowed patenting of university-developed information is destroying our land-grant system. The vision that the land-grant system should be self-supporting is resulting in corporate takeover and leveraging of taxpayer money
The resulting discoveries from this joint use of resources are patented and re-patented, instead of being put into the marketplace so many marketers can use the technology/information and hence let capitalism do its thing. The Bayh-Dole Act should be repealed and we need to recapture our land-grant system and have them focus on the real agricultural problems of local farming instead of the needs of corporate agriculture.
I believe that the industrial era (all large industry, not just agriculture) is coming to an end and it will be a slow and ugly death. I hope it won’t be, but short of revolution of some sort I don’t see a change in direction in the foreseeable future. I see the rise in demand for local food as a symptom of this revolution.
Karl Marx was right, he just had the wrong solution. I see sustainable capitalism as the solution, with many small businesses operating with a triple bottom line like our farm (economic, social and environmental), competing in our local markets with the help of our land-grant system. With modern technology/information and access to it, we no longer need to be big to be efficient.
P.S. I bet this never sees the light of day. I have felt the threat of government and corporations before.
Walker Miller
The Happy Berry Bunch
Six Mile, S.C.
ANSWER: Extension keeps small and large farms alike from making economically crippling decisions on a mass scale. For example, if some new technique or chemical was introduced without much concern given to locally unique environmental conditions, possible crop failures could go unreported. Extensions provide a bridge of communication for one of the world’s most important industries.
Charles Hurd
Clintondale, N.Y.
ANSWER: I live in northwest Pennsylvania. They have already done away with all Extension activities except seminars on stuff like dietary fiber (I kid you not). Before they did this, we had an ace of an Extension agent, who was really on the ball, but he got riffed. When it comes time for pesticide credits, I travel 90-plus miles to Erie to hear something germane to apple production. I used to go about 15 miles, but no more.
I sent an e-mail recently to fruit growers about the fact that some of the extreme lefties in Congress have introduced a new bill, HR 875, which, if passed, will destroy the small farm and fruit market. They have so many testing provisions and nutrient management plans it will effectively destroy small farms while strengthening the (big) guys. I would love to see you have an article about this and see if the growers can be mobilized.
Bill Jones
Kane, Pa.
ANSWER: My main source for information with regard to fruit growing is through the Extension service.
I heard a good quote the other day: “We owe our existence to only two things – regular rain and 3 inches of topsoil.”
I think the bottom line is that we can’t treat the growing of food like other businesses. The network that holds the link to information and improvement to a more sustainable system to produce food must be preserved. The Extension service is that crucial link. Cutting Extension will limit the flow of crucial information.
Steven Christensen
Suttons Bay, Mich.
ANSWER: Extension provides the information that I pass on to the homeowner in the classes I conduct at nurseries and the lectures I give to plant societies and garden clubs. Taking the latest research information to the general public is hard enough as it is, but losing Extension would make it nearly impossible to present that information in a readily understood manner for the layperson.
Lowell Cordas
Lowell’s Tools
Lacey, Wash.
ANSWER: Minnesota did that a few years ago, so we have been through that. Our governor’s answer was: People need to get info from research done by private enterprise.
Unfortunately, we know they usually do research on things that will be profitable to them. Also, the research people from our university system are not being replaced when they retire, leaving another gap in information for fruit and vegetable producers. Both of these systems, whether it be Extension or the research end of it, have been an integral part of agriculture in general, and losing any part is a loss to us. We worked with both as strawberry growers doing studies on flame weeding and getting info from Extension on problems with crops. It’s hard to put a price on their contributions, but losing sources we need is not a good thing for the public good. They have other areas that do not contribute they could cut more easily.
Mike Lunemann
Cohasset, Minn.
ANSWER: The shrinking budget would most likely result in Extension charging for more services to the farmers and 4-H clubs disappearing off the face of the earth. 4-H camps will no longer get funding and will charge more for camps, and other programs would be cut or eliminated.
Kim Overhiser
South Haven, Mich.
ANSWER: The Extension service in this area is my best avenue for promoting my heirloom seed business among local gardeners. I give talks to interested individuals at Extension headquarters and the agents also help me promote my seed sales.
Bill Best
Madison County, Ky.
ANSWER: Extension plays a large role in learning for us. I grew up on a small grain farm in southern Indiana. We do a fall farm market and are looking at adding other crops to expand more throughout the year. We live in an area where there is great market potential for a farm market year round, but we do not have the knowledge to expand into some crops due to lack of experience with them ourselves – nor are they crops that are produced locally.
Knowledge from several Extension programs has given us some direction on things (about which) we would otherwise have no idea. I believe Extension's loss would hurt people like us, and we are just one of several farms across the nation that want to try something new but do not have the knowledge to do so. Extension is a reliable source of information for us.
Zach Eichmiller
Eichmiller Produce
Dubois, Ind.
ANSWER: The Extension system is the only way for some small farmers to get the expertise they need to survive. Large corporate farms will be affected in that huge geographical studies will diminish, but they do a lot of their own research for their specific properties. This is not financially feasible for the small owner. Funding for these programs comes from the taxpayers who benefit from the produce of these small farmers, and is a pittance compared to today’s large budgets and taxes.
Doug Mitchell
Ojai, Calif.
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