Apr 30, 2009

What Effects Will Shrinking/Disappearing Extension Budgets Have for Your Farm?

(Editor’s note: Our question drew a huge response. We had to settle for a sampling in Fruit Growers News and present others here).

We, as a food processing company, rely heavily on Extension to provide much of the basic technical information to our growers and our field staff. Extension is a valuable partner in the efforts to supply our processing plants with quality raw ingredients that meet the high expectations of our customers.

When we assess the viability of a potential new production region, one of the criteria used to determine the probability of long-term success is the strength of the existing Extension program.

The bottom line: The contribution made by our Extension partners is a significant reason why U.S. growers can still compete on a global basis.

Todd DeKryger
Gerber/Nestlé Nutrition
Fremont, Mich.

I currently serve as chair of the California Tree Fruit Agreement and have served on the research committee of that organization for over 20 years. Our industry has been well served by UC Extension and its dwindling resources will be felt in many areas. I farm across Manning Avenue from the Kearney Station and know very well the various researchers who work there.

Pest control research is vital if our industry is to have access to developing new innovative control measures for our relatively minor crops (peach, plum, nectarine). Innovations in water management and mechanical adaptations offer options in cost containment and maximizing inputs.

These are only a few of the areas where Extension personnel impact our industry. There is no organization waiting in the wings to take their place and their absence would be sorely felt.

Rod Milton
Parlier, Calif.

This will put greater pressure on us to provide the information and expertise that the Extension service has historically provided. It will certainly be a paradigm shift for the industry. What the grower once got for free from Extension will have to be acquired from a paid consultant – either an independent consultant or one employed through a chemical distributor.

Case DeYoung
Wilbur-Ellis
Sparta/Grant, Mich.

With the amount of information available on the Internet from Extensions all over the country, I’m not too concerned about the shrinking budgets. Here in Illinois, we have a fabulous Extension that has been working under a shrunken budget for years, and they are still doing a fine job with the limited funds they currently have.

Our previous economy was getting too fat and the fat needed to be cut out. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to go on an economic diet when you have been used to years of economic fat. The economy always has to correct itself, so the over-inflated budgets and prices can come back down to a level that has all of the fat trimmed off and is sustainable (had to get the new buzzword in there!). This will make Extension services and growers become more efficient in how they manage the funds available, and I think we will all be the better for it.

Dennis Norton
Royal Oak Farm Orchard
Harvard, Ill.

Response: Absolutely no impact.

Bob Day
Mad Dog Mesa
Coloma, Calif.

It won’t make much of a difference if Extension is shut down. Most of the information I need comes from the Internet anyway. Those perennial pesticide schools I can do without. I rarely contact them.

Dan Burgner
Burgner Vineyards
Greeneville, Tenn.

In our area, the number of Extension personnel has dwindled, as it has almost everywhere. We do not see our Extension person as much as we did 10 years ago. But, with the increase of technology such as digital cameras, cell phones and the Internet, fewer people can do more things. I think the technological advances offset the need for as many Extension agents as we have all seen in the past.

Matt Chobanian
Childress Vineyards
Lexington, N.C.

The local Extension service has been no service to us, and we try to avoid their input. We are the only grape grower in Holmes County and have had a very good operation without any government input.

Scott Buente
French Ridge Vineyards
Killbuck, Ohio

Probably not much (effect) in the short term, but over time we will start to feel their lack of presence. There is a need for Extension to provide technical support, new ideas, proven ideas, emergency leadership and newly patented products. Without them, we may become a group with our heads in the sand and only ourselves to turn to.

Eric Wuhl
Family Tree Farms
Reedley, Calif.

Extension is the net that holds our community together. The combination of our county Extension office and our local Agricultural Experiment Station ensures that the land-grant mission of bringing the educational community to the farm and to every aspect of our community is met. If you cut Extension and experiment station budgets, you cut the heart out of our community support system just when we need it the most.

Don Coe
Black Star Farms
Leelanau, Mich.

We’re small farmers. For us and many more like us, who gather at least once a month to receive knowledge and assistance from activities sponsored and provided by our Extension official, there are no words to express the incalculable value of our much appreciated and loved agent.

Unlike the large agricultural mega enterprises, with a cadre of “experts” and gigantic pool of resources to address the needs of their crops, Extension agents give more than their current shoestring resources reasonably permit.

Moreover, when you add their crucial involvement with FFA, 4-H, Master Gardeners, plus their participation in countless community events, Extension agents project themselves and impart an incredibly vast beneficial influence over their total community. They are respected, admired and loved, something that few public officials share. The idea of further cuts, instead of an increase to their budgets, is an abhorrent thought.

M.P. Fabar
Chef’s Pantry
Georgetown, Del.

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.

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.

This is an excellent question. I remember meeting you when I was District Conservationist in Ann Arbor, Mich., back in 1982, when both of us were fairly early in our careers and much younger. I had been forced by our SCS (now NRCS) in East Lansing to come down to Ann Arbor to help turn around the Saline Valley Rural Clean Water Project that covered portions of Washtenaw and Monroe Counties. I left that position to work for MSU Extension. I began my Extension career in Washtenaw County.

I mention this because it goes back a ways and make me remember all the times MSU Extension has been slated for extinction ….

MSU Extension has had a huge positive effect on the lives of the citizens of Michigan and the United States in ways most do not even know. It is not emphasized enough, but one of the more beneficial impacts of MSUE is its focus on programs that provide self-sufficiency to our citizens. This self-sufficiency is seen in programs in 4-H, home economics, agriculture and community development. I always wished we had more programs funded by our universities and the federal government that focused on self-sufficiency. All government assistance to our citizens who are struggling should have this as an outcome.

I think we would be quite worse off in Michigan if it was not for MSU Extension. I thought of budget cuts and the elimination of very important programs in our state when we implemented term limits (on legislators). I remember having a discussion with my Extension colleagues about the loss of institutional memory and institutional culture (we would see) in Lansing (the capital) if term limits were instituted. The attempt to eliminate MSUE represents a lack of awareness of MSUE’s impact on this state. We are not able to educate incoming legislators quickly enough to prevent the continuous damage we are seeing to our state now. My opinion is a lot of this is due to the limited terms of our legislators in office and the election of those who have no knowledge of what MSU Extension has done over the years.

Our food, our recreation, our forests, our waters, our air, our grass, our homes and our lives would not have been nearly as much fun over the years without MSU Extension.

Morse Brown, Program Manager
Michigan Food and Farming Systems
(Wayne County MSU Extension Director Emeritus 2002)
Livonia, Mich.

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

No effect.

Bob Mathison
Stemilt Growers
Wenatchee, Wash.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.