Kansas Ag Connection - Sidebar: Australian Researcher 'Envious' of U.S. Extension System

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Sidebar: Australian Researcher 'Envious' of U.S. Extension System
Kansas Ag Connection - 06/28/2017

In the past few months, Ruth Wallace has seen first-hand how Kansas extension agents have helped citizens with local responses to such disasters as an ice storm and a brutal wildfire that took out nearly 700,000 acres of the state's prairie.

"One of the things that happens in emergency responses is everyone comes in and focuses on the problem that is going on," said Wallace, a Fulbright Scholar from Charles Darwin University who has been studying at Kansas State University since January. "So whether it's a fire or a health outbreak or wheat rust or whatever, everyone focuses on that.

"But if you have actually gone through a few of those things with that community, you know that if we leave people out, we've missed a whole lot of the community. And if you don't do this well, you might have a potential re-emergence of the problem because they didn't get the information that they needed to clean up their trees, or didn't get the information about cleaning off your boots, or whatever."

Wallace said that when situations are handled poorly, it not only affects the immediate response, but also the community's ability to handle future events. "You're not going to get the same level of engagement, and it's a lot more work," she said.

"We can get a lot more value for investment of government policy and programs if we understand that community's situation -- what's gone on before -- and we can learn form the past and we can also help build it up so that each response improves rather than building a wall of resistance."

Australia eliminated extension-like services several years ago, opting instead for nationally run programs to help with local programs. Wallace thinks the United States' extension system is a much better way to operate.

"You've got people in extension who have worked in those places for long periods of time, who remember the last time something happened, they remember who got involved, they remember what went wrong," she said. "Having someone like that in the room gives you an overview and an opportunity to learn that is just invaluable."

American land-grant universities were first established in 1862 when the U.S. government passed the Morrill Act. It is the forerunner to having a locally-governed extension program in every state. Kansas has extension offices serving all 105 counties.

"It's taken 150 years to build that shield that the state has against missing things or not planning well or letting things fall through the cracks," Wallace said. "You have that network that really is going to hold things together very effectively."

She adds: "I'm very envious. I wish we were doing that in Australia and I think a lot of our planning could shift to this sort of model, a more place-based approach to planning and support that is integrated and is a learning institution but also plans for the long-term."

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