Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
the responsibilities of Cooperative Extension and ask advisors, “What
is
your mission?” is a remarkable example of the persisting confl icts over
what constitutes the public good for agricultural science and the land-grant
system. Cooperative Extension's mission crisis remains unresolved despite
advisors' attempts to strike some kind of balance between the diverse needs
and opportunities represented by different types of clientele.
My discussion in this chapter has focused on the ambiguities in Coopera-
tive Extension's mission and the consequences of this uncertainty. Exten-
sion work was intended to mend the broken social structures and economic
conditions of rural life, but no one seemed to agree on what this meant.
Science and rational planning were to provide the answer, but what was
the question? The confl icts surrounding these questions makes an ironic
point about advisors' work: though Cooperative Extension was intended
as an institution of change and repair, the meaning of their own mission
has also been the subject of negotiation and intervention. Just as repair is
a site for power relations to manifest themselves in other areas where
orders are constructed, so Cooperative Extension itself has gone through
this same process. Mission ambiguity has allowed a whole host of compet-
ing infl uences to shape the direction of extension work, and it is still being
negotiated. Some of these infl uences were, in a sense, global, and built in
to the design of Cooperative Extension, especially the farm bureau struc-
ture and its early effect on the clientele of advisors. Many other factors,
however, have been much more local, especially the power of local actors
to collapse the ambiguity surrounding extension's mission into an express
set of means and ends.
In Monterey County this process has led to discipline-based advising,
and it is clear that the power and infl uence of the niche market industries
has shaped the kind of work that advisors may choose to do. By the same
token, small growers have also shown their infl uence through advocates
at the county and state levels. Advisors' attention to their problems,
however, is limited when compared to the service they provide commercial
growers, pointing to limits on the negotiated character of advisors' work.
Although one could argue that the affi rmative action and small-farms
programs implemented by the UC in the 1970s were attempts to change
the direction of advisors' work, these changes were clearly not transforma-
tive. The farm industry and the advisors themselves largely maintained
their relationships in the Salinas Valley.
