Very often, having grown up on a commercial farm and fresh from university with a Batchelor of Science degree, these highly enthusiastic government employees were instrumental in setting up study groups and organising well-attended farmers days. They were also in charge of the local soil conservation committees that checked on farmers overexploiting natural resources.
The new generation of officers find themselves tied up in endless meetings, far removed from the realities of commercial farming. They are project managers who too often have to help with applications for funds for homestead gardens.
So, they may be seen as the face of the government and blamed when things go wrong. Some complain they never get the chance to do the work they trained for, namely to advise communal farmers on how to upgrade to commercial enterprises.
Although the role of the Department of Extension has changed somewhat in South Africa, this is definitely a job at which a young, dedicated officer can have a huge positive impact on a community’s wellbeing and the development of human capital.
The following emphasises how important their job is:
The first modern agricultural extension service was born as a result of the food crisis caused by the outbreak of potato blight in Europe in 1845. Its effects in Ireland were particularly severe because the peasants relied on potatoes in their diet.
The ‘potato famine’ lasted until 1851, by which time extension officers had persuaded people to grow a variety of other vegetables and not only potatoes, in other words, not to mono-crop. Since then, agricultural extension (which means extending knowledge to the people) has developed into a science.
Locally, before climate change became a buzzword, it was believed by some that the Karoo was expanding northwards and to the north-east as a result of wrong grazing systems. In the Free State, hot, red sand storms, driven by the westerlies blowing over wrongly ploughed soils were suffocating at times.
The fight was against soil erosion. The official departmental mantra was to farm in harmony with nature. A successful farmer was defined as someone who could earn a decent living on his farm without overexploiting it. The extension officers worked hard to get the message across.
Today the extension role in commercial farming districts has been taken over by the commodity organisations, co-operatives, and other big players who have the resources to do outstanding work. They are also always on the lookout for leader farmers that can be used as examples to persuade others to change their ways.
Farmers vary in the degree to which they accept and use new techniques, and can be grouped into categories ranging from the innovators to laggards. The latter are absolutely the last to change, that is if they ever do. They prefer the traditional methods, making no effort to broaden their knowledge. This is where extension comes in. Of course, their task, previously blocked largely by cultural traditions, is now further complicated by Google searches, if not artificial intelligence (AI).
With little institutional memory to support them, established commercial farmers would surely be more than willing to mentor young extension officers who show promise and a desire to get up to date with modern techniques and thinking.
There is an argument that we should sometimes look past the Western focus on production and return on investment. But the hard truth is that is exactly what commercial agriculture is built on.
