Urban Extension in the Decade Ahead: Collaboration, Competition, or Contraction

Abstract

Since the passage of the Morrill Act in 1862 and related legislation in the years following, agricultural universities have benefited greatly from the funding from federal, state, and local initiatives for research and from extending that research to the person who could benefit the most from it, the farmer. Today, with the urbanization of America, much can be learned from the land-grant university model with its extension agents and applied to the urban university and to the person it can benefit most, the city-dweller. This article examines what has been learned about urban extensi6n, how it can be improved, and what its relationship is and may be with the existing cooperative extension agencies.