History of Extension Education:

 The birth of modern agricultural extension services:

The first agricultural extension service of a modem kind came into existence as the result of a crisis and the initiative of the occupant of a high office of authority. The crisis was the outbreak of potato blight in Europe in 1845. In Ireland its effects were particularly severe because the predominantly peasant population relied on potatoes in their diet, and "the potato famine" persisted until 1851.

The growth of agricultural education and extension work in continental Europe was to have a strong impact on the emergence of comparable activity in the United Kingdom. An official commission on technical education in the early 1880s included a detailed review of the European developments (Jenkins, 1884). At the end of the decade, a cluster of enactments, which established county-based local government created a board of agriculture, promoted technical (including agricultural) education, and allocated funds for the purpose, enabled agricultural extension work to be initiated.

Modern agricultural extension:

As agricultural extension organizations have grown and changed, they have invariably become more bureaucratic with distinct hierarchical structures. The work of dispersed extension workers had to be administered and controlled so that one or more levels of intermediary structure (for example, district, region) have been created between the field-level agents and their headquarters. Thus the management of extension activities has become a major preoccupation, and many organizations have been open to the criticism of being top-heavy and top-down in their approach. However, with funding derived largely from national revenues (or international donors), senior managers have necessarily had to account for and justify their organization's activities. This has been equally pronounced in the North as in the South where, after colonial territories gained their independence, extension work has commonly been reinvented and staffed by nationals under the aegis of their new administrations (usual ministries of agriculture).

The future:

The need for agricultural and rural information and advisory services is likely to intensify in the foreseeable future. In much of the world, agriculture faces the challenge of keeping pace with a rapidly increasing population with few reserves of potentially cultivable land. Farmers will have to become more efficient and specialized. From a government perspective, whatever priority is given to production, the extension will remain a key policy tool for promoting ecologically and socially sustainable farming practices.

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