Views future changes in Extension and lists suggestions for Extension marketing workers to improve their position.Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Kramer, Robert C.

English

Research Papers in Economics

EXTENSION — 2000 A. D . — COMMENTS
by
Robert C, Kramer, President
California State Polytechnic University
Pomona, California
Views future changes in Extension
and lists suggestions for Extension
marketing workers to improve their
position,
California State Polytechnic University
is a land grant university; it just does not
have the opportunityto spend state and fed-
eral funds for its programs. But I think all
the things that are done by land grant in-
stitutions are done here. Many of them are
done very well by our competent faculty,
and we have Mr. Lacy and many others who
you have seen today and many, many more who
are really carrying out programs similar to
those in the land grant system. To go to
the discussion, let me give a little back-
ground. After World War II, the Research
and Marketing Act was passed and most of the
states were given funds to employ extension
and research workers to start out on this
new marketing effort. I rememberat Michigan
State, the namesof Love, Bodwell, Mott, and
Higgins who were in Extension and were a
part of that extension effort. They started
their extension marketing programs. I was
in their department and observed from the
outside because at that time I was a staff
member of the Michigan Experiment Station.
I think one of the things Jarvis Cain
brought to the surface early was that there
was the need for the sharing, the cooperation
with the Experiment Station or with the re-
search workers who were in the marketing
efforts. There was also clearly demonstrated,
the need to work with the staff in the USDA
in Washington. And with that background, in
1953, we went to the legislature in Michigan
and got a sum of money to expand our market-
ing work under what became the Michigan
Marketing Program, and here again there was
this demonstration of the need for Extension
people to work with marketing people at the
Journal of Food Distribution Research
state, the regional, and the national level.
And particularlyto work with thosein indus-
try who were involved in the marketing,
processing and distribution segments.
As I listened to Jarvis and as I read
the paper, it seems to me that one of the
problems in Extension is a problem of defi-
nition. What is Adult Education? What is
Continuing Education? What is Extension?
What is Service? And, based upon Merry
Bodwell beinga consumer education specialist,
from about 1947 until the mid 50’s, when we
reorganized the Michigan Marketing Program,
we didn’t call it consumer education. We
called it consumer marketing information.
I’m president at the University and
education is my business. It has been for
25 years and I don’t want to be misunder-
stood. Our job is education, but I don’t
believe that many of us feel we want to be
educated by others, We do want data. We
do want to analyze. We do want information
and I think we really undersell what we have
to offer frequently by talking about educa-
tion. When thatis our business, but that’s
not the handle that we should put on.
Iagreewith Jarvis that a new structure
is needed. One of my fears is that we will
not jointly develop this new structure; the
new structure will be imposed. It will be
imposed by people who really do not fully
understand what they’re doing. Now this
institutional structure deals with the organ-
ization at the federal level, the regional,
the area, the state, the county, the commun-
ity, and in fact the international. But my
point is that we have to help develop the
structure before someone tells us what it’s
going to be,
Now in speaking about marketing distri-
bution efforts, I think it was only natural
for Jarvis to omit the California State
February 73/page 128Polytechnic University of Pomona, the Uni-
versity of Southern California, the Harvard
Business School and many, many others be-
cause surely we and they are interested in
the food industry, marketing, and in dis-
tribution. 1 thought Jarvis also failed
to mention that the Super Market Institute,
the trade associations, and many others in-
cluding the commercial companies and some
represented here in what would be a market-
ing education effort.
In my view, most of the impediments
to change are not institutional, they are
individual. Now he spoke some to the
security issue and retirement. I would
also add as faculty members, and many of
you are, we could talk about tenure, we
could talk about pleasure, and we could
add other individual impediments to the new
institutions that we need. As examples, he
spoke about the open University or the Uni-
versity without walls. For about two years
now, we have been attempting to try some
new approaches at this University. To make
the point again when we talk about external
degrees; when we talk about students chal-
lenging by examination for the credit for
the course; when we talk about giving ad-
vanced credit through entrance examinations
we find that the professors and the indi-
vidual facultymembers are very much opposed
to this. Yet we know that college students
today are more sophisticated, have better
vocabularies, are more travelled, and prob-
ably have more education as freshmen then
we had when we first went to the University.
So I would again repeat this, most of the
major impediments to change are not insti-
tutional, they’re individual.
It’s been very difficult to try to
react and respond to this paper for two
reasons. One, I spent seven years as an
Experiment Station worker and eleven years
in Extension and as I read through and as I
listened to your paper, Jarvis, memories
of different involvements, different oppor-
tunities, kept coming into mind. That was
one reason, but secondly, detachment,
Actually for seven years I haven’t had the
time, nor the opportunity to really find
out what Extension has done, yet I have had
the interest and I have some information.
But in my years as an Extension specialist
and an administrator, 1!11 have to admit
that I had quite a bit of freedom, quite a
bit of freedom to develop, quite a bit of
freedom to travel . For three years I served
as a marketing consultant to the old Marshall
Plan over in Europe and I didn’t have any
trouble with my administrators getting the
time off to go to Paris to give a paper or
visiting 18 European countries to find out
about their systems.
So again, I think it comes back to the
individual, whathe proposes, howhe proposes,
and howhe sells his program and the benefits
that he can contribute back on his home cam-
pus, in his state, in his region. Wlat I
really believe is needed, and we hear a lot
about this in meetings, conferences, journals
and in the press, is a marketing strategy,
I think those of you in this organization
who are in marketing need to develop a mar-
keting strategy to sell those people who are
involved with what you have to offer and how
you could make your contributions. As YOU
think ahead Iwould hope that you might give
this some consideration as to the marketing
strategy to market your own product with
your own administrators, and with the poli-
ticians both at the local and the national
level .
Now in my view, politicians do respond
to the public. In fact, I think they’re
most responsive. Therehas been a reduction
in the power base and the support for exten-
sion, Agriculture, Jarvis indicated, used
to involve 70-80%of the working force, it’s
down below 10% in this nation now, So with
this change which came about because of ef-
ficient production and because of the shifts
and the development of the service industries,
these politicians don’t feel they need to
respond to the agricultural leaders as they
did in the past. I think this reduction in
power base had lead to some of the changes
that have been made back in Washington and
in our states, and I think that more changes
are coming. I think its natural that the
agricultural leaders, the farmers, and the
ranchers are going to put the pressure on to
get money for agriculture production, farm
management, pesticide management, and the
other things that have been mentioned. And,
I think the old leadership that was used for
home economics, for4-H, for marketing, just
naturally has diminished. Personally, I’m
concerned as an outsider now, about what re-
February 73/page 129 Journal of Food Distribution Researchtirements and possible non re-election of a
few people in Congress might mean to the
support for the U.S. Department of Agricul-
ture. I’m also concerned about retirements
and non election and what that might do to
the support for Extensional the state level.
In my view, if Extension specialists and
researchers feel that their marketing pro-
grams are important, they’re going to have
to do several things. They mustwork closely
together and they must work closely with
leaders in industry. They must communicate
what they do much better with their supe-
riors. They must organize and develop
political understandings necessary at the
national and state levels if they wish to
continue receiving public monies. They
must gain political support from the food
industry and the businesses related to the
food industry to help get continued public
monies .
If the above list does not materialize,
this is the way I see Extension in 2000 A,D.
The USDA will be a small agency in some
larger federal department and that smaller
agency will be concerned primarily with
farm and ranch production and management.
Marketingwillbe in another federal depart-
ment, possibly the Department of Commerce.
4-H will be in health, education, and wel-
fare; Home Economics will be in a new con-
sumer department, and I do not think that
we can play down the trends that are now
becoming evident of the power of the con-
sumer. You can talk about women’s lib,
the FDA, or many other things, but I be-
lieve after about 40 years now that we’re
coming close to the consumer department.
In my experience, the larger businesses in
the food distribution industry have really
gone out and hired consultants for pay when
they wanted some marketing information,
data, analysis and it could very well be
that marketing extension will be on a paid
consultant basis in 2000 A.D.
Now lastly, I agree with Jarvis that a
lot of hard work is needed to prepare for
A.D, 2000.
-k >’dnwc *
EXTENSION— 2000 A.D. — COMMENTS
by
William W, Wood, Jr.
University of California
Riverside, California
Presents an alternative view to
the position paper.
Sample observations indicate that in
1950 there were 2.2 individuals per vehicle
on Los Angeles freeways. By 1960 the number
had dropped to 1.8 and by 1970 to 1.4 indi-
viduals per vehicle. The conclusion drawn
by the trained observer studying transpor-
tation models was that by 1990, one out of
every three vehicles onLos Angeles freeways
would be empty.
Journal of Food Distribution Research
The above illustration is by way of
pointing out difficulties with trend pro-
jections in attempting to forecast what
might be the situation at some future date.
The reason for this is my disagreement with
the basic assumption on which professor
Cain’s paper is built, i.e., that food con-
sumption and nutrient delivery systems in
theyear 2000 will beofa certain type pred-
icated primarily upon the speed of preparation
and convenience. Obviously, trends in the
food purveying industry would indicate at
this point in time a direction toward that
end. However, I am not willing to accept
February 73/page 130

EXTENSION-2000 A.D.- COMMENTS

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