TO: Dr. Dick Shibles, 1563 Agronomy Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011-1010

Book Review for Crop Science

Land-Grant Universities and Extension: into the 21^st Century. G.R. McDowell. Iowa State University Press, 2121 South State Ave., Ames, IA 50014. 2001. Hardback, 214 p., $59.95. ISBN 0-8138-1918-0.

Professor McDowell does not set out to win friends, but in Land-Grant Universities and Extension he vigorously pursues a goal to influence people. In a well-referenced, current, and highly relevant call to action in Extension, the author provides a frank and hard-hitting critique of perhaps the most controversial activity in our state agricultural universities. Strongly critical of many Extension activities over the past several decades, McDowell does not fault the well-meaning, hard working, and dedicated educators who are still following a model that was successful through the 1950s. Instead, he faults the university leadership for lack of vision in evolving to meet the stated social contract for which the people's universities were established, and blames agriculture for capturing Extension and holding it hostage while the rural U.S. changed drastically in its land ownership patterns, technical problems, and real human needs. This book is for anyone who cares about rural communities, about future agroecosystems and rural landscapes, and about those most often disadvantaged in society.

McDowell outlines the history of the land-grant university system and its early role in serving production agriculture and rural people. Cooperative Extension was established to formalize and specialize the responsibility for working directly with agricultural producers, and in part to liberate researchers and classroom instructors from the inevitable interruptions in their on-campus work. When the need was to efficiently transfer new information from the research laboratories and experimental plots to a dispersed farmer and rancher clientele, this model worked well. "Connecting knowledge, practice, and art" was an early mission of the land-grant universities, and the Extension Service accomplished this well. Experts in various areas of agricultural production roamed the countryside providing workshops, tours, advice, and written materials as the outreach arm of each state college of agriculture. With little competition and an impressive youth program (4-H) to enhance education across generations, these agents were highly successful and enjoyed high status in their communities. What has happened, according to McDowell, is that agriculture has changed drastically through consolidation of lands and industrialization of the production process, while Extension operates largely in the traditional mode. In his opinion, the organization is rapidly becoming marginalized as other groups take on the many roles of information providers, and while the problems in rural areas unrelated to crop and animal production multiply. The author's projection is that Extension's rapid demise is a signal of the death of the entire land-grant university system, yet he expresses hope that the network of education and facilities of Extension also provide an opportunity for our system to regain its position as the people's university system, one of the founding principles that set our public university system apart from the purely academic model of their private counterparts.

George McDowell goes into great detail in outlining the reward system and organization of disciplinary departments that currently set the incentives in our universities. He cites personal and specific examples of how the system of promotion and professional societies recognizes basic research publications, while finding it difficult to evaluate and recognize good teaching or service. He is equally critical of those in Extension who have abandoned real scholarship in favor of time-consuming hours on the road and consulting with individual farmers. McDowell faults all academics in using tenure to provide job security, rather than for its original intent to protect the right of academics to say what needs to be said, based on their scholarship, even if this is not popular with society at large. He also criticizes a reactive establishment that tells farmers what they want to hear, rather than help them face the harsh realities of a changing industry -- what they need to hear. The author finds land-grant administrators unable or unwilling to face the traditional support groups in agriculture -- Farm Bureau, commodity groups, others -- with a message that rural communities, families, and people have changed, and so should the educational priorities of Extension. His analysis reminds one of Albert Einstein's quote, "Problems are unlikely to be solved by those who created them."

While much of the book is critical of the current system and pessimistic about its survival, McDowell describes several successful programs that are solving real-world problems beyond fine-tuning agricultural production. A history project in North Carolina has enjoyed large success, while high profile publications in Oregon on the fate of salmon and another on rural poverty throughout the state have brought public attention to current issues and credibility to the university. Parents Forever in Minnesota, Community Resource Development in Wisconsin, and Story Telling in St. Louis also receive attention as model projects for the future. In a visionary statement, McDowell outlines the activities of a fictional Engaged University that returns to the roots of the land-grant university mission, and meets real human needs.

If there is any criticism of the book, it must be directed at the author's treatment of symptoms in many cases rather than the root causes. He discusses consolidation of farms and decline of families and communities, without focusing on the huge concentration in the input and grain trade industries and their inordinate political influence to sustain self-serving federal programs that really save few farmers. He describes the consequences of a rapidly globalizing food system while not providing support for the obvious alternative of bioregional food that could be promoted by his "return to the roots" message for the land-grant universities. Although critical of his colleagues in Agricultural Economics for their worship of the econometric models at the expense of practical solutions for farmers, he does not emphasize enough the need for practical economic tools to analyze farms, watersheds, and communities. All or our disciplines continue in research, classroom, and extension meetings in the reductionist model while ignoring the performance of larger systems and their impacts on the agroecosystem. McDowell does point out the disproportionate emphasis on production agriculture at the expense of natural resources and community programs.

This book is a "must-read" for anyone who cares about Extension as well as the long-term future of our public universities. It is best summarized by the last paragraph from the book:

It has been their engagement as people's universities that made the land-grant universities better than Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Humbolt, Cambridge, or Oxford in renewing culture, interpreting the past, and expanding our understanding of the human condition. Unless they carry out that renegotiation and return to their roots, they stand in danger of being no better. From their beginnings, in the values of American democracy, the land-grant institutions were to be better than the elite institutions and were to make the democracy itself better, in part on the basis of whom they admitted to their classrooms. Now they must achieve their greatness on the basis of how much of the university is engaged with America and with whom they engage. There is much to be done in renewing and fulfilling the land-grant universities' social contract with America into the 21^st century.

Charles A. Francis

University of Nebraska

225 Keim Hall

Lincoln, NE 68583-0915

(cfrancis2@unl.edu)