Agricultural Extension - Extension Terminology

Extension Terminology

The term extension was first used to describe adult education programmes in England in the second half of the 19th century; these programmes helped to expand - or extend - the work of universities beyond the campus and into the neighbouring community. The term was later adopted in the United States of America, while in Britain it was replaced with "advisory service" in the 20th century. A number of other terms are used in different parts of the world to describe the same or a similar concept:

• Arabic: Al-Ershad (“Guidance”)
• Dutch: Voorlichting (“lighting the path”)
• German: Beratung (“advisory work”)
• French: Vulgarisation (“popularisation”)
• Spanish: Capacitación (“Training” "Capacity Building")
• Thai, Lao: Song-Suem (“to promote”)
• Persian: Tarvij & Gostaresh (“to promote and to extend”)

In the US, an extension agent is a university employee who develops and delivers educational programs to assist people in economic and community development, leadership, family issues, agriculture and environment. Another program area extension agents provide is 4-H and Youth. Many extension agents work for cooperative extension service programs at land-grant universities. They are sometimes referred to as county agents or educators.

There is no widely accepted definition of agricultural extension. The ten examples given below are taken from a number of books on extension published over a period of more than 50 years:

1949: The central task of extension is to help rural families help themselves by applying science, whether physical or social, to the daily routines of farming, homemaking, and family and community living. 1965: Agricultural extension has been described as a system of out-of-school education for rural people. 1966: Extension personnel have the task of bringing scientific knowledge to farm families in the farms and homes. The object of the task is to improve the efficiency of agriculture. 1973: Extension is a service or system which assists farm people, through educational procedures, in improving farming methods and techniques, increasing production efficiency and income, bettering their levels of living and lifting social and educational standards. 1974: Extension involves the conscious use of communication of information to help people form sound opinions and make good decisions. 1982: Agricultural Extension: Assistance to farmers to help them identify and analyse their production problems and become aware of the opportunities for improvement. 1988: Extension is a professional communication intervention deployed by an institution to induce change in voluntary behaviours with a presumed public or collective utility. 1997: Extension the organized exchange of information and the purposive transfer of skills. 1999: The essence of agricultural extension is to facilitate interplay and nurture synergies within a total information system involving agricultural research, agricultural education and a vast complex of information-providing businesses. 2004: Extension a series of embedded communicative interventions that are meant, among others, to develop and/or induce innovations which supposedly help to resolve (usually multi-actor) problematic situations.