University researchers and extension agents are reinventing their role within agriculture with limited resources.

When the first crop of university extension agents took to the fields a century ago, U.S. agriculture was relatively primitive. Farm power was still mostly generated by horses and mules in 1914, and fertilizer came in the form of manure and crushed livestock bones. The human landscape was also much different — roughly 1 in 3 Americans were employed in agriculture back then, compared to fewer than one in 60 today.

The population shift away from farming is one of the reasons university research and extension is struggling to remain relevant to modern Americans, said Ben West, regional extension director at the University of Tennessee, who has studied the issue.

As university researchers and extension agents look to the future, they are contemplating how to deploy limited resources to stay useful to farmers as well as the trade-offs such decisions involve.

Within agriculture, the role of extension has changed in the past hundred years.

Not only do extension agents have fewer farmers to educate, but also those growers are now more likely to have college degrees themselves, West said.

At the same time, suppliers of seed, fertilizer and other inputs have hired cadres of agronomists who are sometimes seen as supplanting the role of extension, he said.

Source - http://www.freshplaza.com