Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
timely information that helps to maintain a complex system of farm
production.
This new system provided advisors a way to work out their mission, but
not without consequences; the move toward discipline-based advising has
changed the kind of work that advisors do, and who they do it with. With
their specialization and emphasis on research, Monterey County's farm
advisors are less able to provide the traditional basic extension advice
needed by the more modest growers whose plight inspired the creation of
Cooperative Extension. Although Monterey County no longer has any
substantial dairy or fi eld crop growers, there are still growers working in
strawberries and other small fruits, organic vegetable production, and
other areas of farming where growers can make a humble living on a much
smaller scale of production than the county's larger commercial growers.
These two groups represent very different sets of clientele for advisors in
the Salinas Valley, and their choices about which group to focus on usually
have trade-offs associated with the capitalization of their clientele and the
kinds of help they need. Advisors sometimes fi nd it diffi cult to reconcile
their program of extension work with the varying needs of large and small
growers. The county extension director described this dilemma in terms of
the current advisors' job demands:
Director:
The entry-level farmers need somebody to be out there, watch-
ing what they do every week, the old-time farm advisor way. And advisors
now simply don't have the time to do that.
Smaller growers, especially beginners with basic production questions,
often require very basic advice on, as another advisor told me, such ques-
tions as, “What's this?” “What's that?” “How come all my plants are
dead?” This is not to say that they cannot benefi t from research on their
crops and farming practices, but they may not be in a position to use this
information until they master actually growing a successful crop. Ironi-
cally, much of this work with smaller growers is truly advising—giving less
experienced growers advice on basic methods of crop production. But as
a consequence of the changed emphasis, the meaning of being an advisor
has changed, and the main aspect of an advisor's work has become research
and problem solving.
Those small growers who
do
have considerable experience with crop
production may yet have very serious farming problems—most often
