The Challenge Within

Bloome offers two responses to the question of whether commercial agriculture continues to need Extension. While I might not choose to use the name of a well-known lunch meat to describe my response to such a question, I'd support his second hypothesis. That is to say, the farmers, ranchers, and woodlot managers who make up American agriculture face a difficult task of survival in a world of increasing public scrutiny. The issues are no longer just production efficiency, rather they're an increasingly complex matrix often referred to as sustainability. This matrix includes expectations that agriculture will be environmentally sound, humanly safe, bureaucratically regulated, politically controlled (export quotas), and strongly influenced by world markets.

To continue to help American agriculture, Extension must move rapidly into this complex arena often called public policy education. At the same time, we must be able to maintain the research-based credibility on which we've built our success.

I believe one of the greatest obstacles to overcome lies not with our agricultural public, but within our own university systems. Becoming involved in issues-based education requires flexibility in bringing together faculty resources that will challenge our traditional departmental and college "boxes." We need faculty from a broad spectrum of disciplines talking and working together to apply their disciplines to the problem. Yet, as a general rule this isn't happening. Department-based faculty seem pre-occupied with their own disciplines. Further, administrators of these units appear driven by the need to protect their discipline. Let's hope the Pogo philosophy, "We have met the enemy and they are us" doesn't apply to Extension's ability to respond. If we can overcome the challenge within, we have much to offer commercial agriculture.