At a recent farm meeting I met a young lady who recently left a Virginia Cooperative Extension position for a job with a multinational agribusiness. She said she liked her new job, and the timing was certainly right because the county Cooperative Extension office was being closed due to the severe shortage in available state funds. Note that this wasn’t a cutback: The whole county Extension program is being eliminated.
This certainly isn’t the first Extension office to be closed and unfortunately it almost certainly won’t be the last. As an old Extension educator, every one of these offices that closes bothers me. Once eliminated, I expect it would take a huge increase in economic prosperity for a closed Cooperative Extension office to rise from the ashes.
Less dramatic but almost as damaging are the sweetheart deals being offered for early retirements of seasoned Extension workers. The way it’s supposed to work is that the old educate the young, passing on what they’ve learned to their eventual replacement. However, it’s cheaper to pay a entry-level professional than one with a quarter-century or more of experience, so it just makes good fiscal sense to offer early retirement incentives. However, what often happens is that there’s too little time for the “old guy” (or gal) to pass on the wisdom of the ages. Learning from your own mistakes is OK as far as it goes, but most farmers would prefer that you don’t make mistakes–even if you learn from them–on their backs!