Whitford reviews extension's role

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Science is important to farming.

But getting that message across isn’t always easy.

Professor Fred Whitford shared details about the Purdue University Extension Service’s role over the years in helping educate farmers at the Jay County Ag Week Farmer Night dinner at Jay County Fairgrounds.

“This is ag week. Should we not be celebrating all the men and women who came before us?” Whitford asked the crowd of about 100 as he shared a list of early extension service agents. “We are walking in their footsteps. And we are creating our own new path.”

The path for the extension service began in 1912 with Sears Roebuck putting up funds to get the organization started. Over the years, it has helped encourage farmers to consider changes in an industry in which practices are passed down generation to generation. The list of improvements and education the service offered goes on and on:

•Showing the importance of using lime on farmland to help regulate the soil’s acidity.

•Helping farmers select the highest-quality corn for seed.

•Adjusting the diet for hogs away from only corn, which lacks protein, and mixing in soybeans for that purpose.

•Shifting soybeans from a hay crop to a cash crop.

•Informing farmers that “grunt pigs” were infected with roundworms.

•Proving that some hens are far more productive in terms of egg laying than others.

•Testing the quality of milk, which at one point was a major source of tuberculosis.

All of those items and more were taught by extension service agents across the state. And it wasn’t easy to convince farmers, especially in the early years of the service, of the need for change.

“We get old and we get stuck in our ways,” Whitford said.

But it happened if the agents could clearly demonstrate the problems that would be solved or the improvements that would be made.

“This was part of convincing farmers that science had a part in their daily life,” he added.

In addition to going directly to farmers, the extension service effected change through their children.

Using 4-H and school programs, extension agents were able to engrain new ideas in the younger generation. Sometimes that’s easier, Whitford said, because children are more willing to try new things.

“We worked in the schools, educating the next generation of farmers,” said Whitford. But, there was an ulterior motive, he added. “We worked through these kids to get to their parents.

“We try to work with the youth to try to be more efficient and better meet the needs of farmers.”