Fundamentals of Extension Education

Why Extension

• You cannot apply yesterday’s methods today and be in business tomorrow. The need to obvious especially for the agriculture predominant in rural economy with its major component of agriculture, to keep the with the brisk changes characteristic of modern times. In other words, the rural people should know and adopt useful research finding from time to time, and also transmit their problem to the research workers for solution.
• The researchers neither have the time nor are they equipped for the job of persuading the villagers to adopt scientific methods and to ascertain from them the rural problems. On the other hand it is impracticable for the millions of farmers to visit the research stations and learn things by themselves. Thus an agency is required to bridge the gulf between the research workers and the people at large, to play the dual role of interpreting the results of research to the farmers (in such a way that they accept and adopt the recommendations)as well as of conveying the farmers problems to the research stations for solutions. This agency is termed ‘Extension’, and the personnel managing this agency/organization are called Extension workers.
• To equip the prospective extension workers for their job, it is necessary for them to be trained adequately in the formal “teaching institutions”. Thus we find that three kinds of inter related services are essential in the process of rural development.

Figure: The three links in the chain of rural development