Reseacrh Memo #1- Cooperative Extension and Climate Change

As we attempt to cope with climate change, there is much discussion concerning how information is best transferred from researchers to citizens, and the role of institutions that lie between. Historically, the cooperative extension services associated with land grant universities have been a reliable method to communicate pertinent research to professionals and ordinary citizens concerning agriculture, home economics, and natural resources, while providing a venue for feedback on necessary research in those fields.

The collaborative and interactional nature of this course are reflected in cooperative extension programs. As an interface between practitioners and research in the same field, cooperative extension services, informs, and strengthens both sides of the interaction. I find the cooperative extension service to be a time-honored program that exemplifies the inherently interactional nature of the applied arts and sciences. Additionally, I find it highly appropriate to use a digital archive platform such as The Asthma Files to distribute and organize my research, as it mirrors the cooperative extension’s own transition from a series of printed bulletins to a more web-based approach of dissemination. In either platform, the intent seems for saturation and direction with an understanding of accessibility.

Though not entirely digital, the cooperative extension service is alive-and-well, and not relegated to an unattended vertical file of a pre-internet age. This service continues have an active and necessary role in how research and practice in the applied arts and sciences are communicated and delivered. My final project seeks to ask: what role does, or could, cooperative extension, or similarly modeled programs, have in educating citizens on climate change or other environmental issues?

I have identified three potential paths or sub-questions. First, how effective and extensive is cooperative extension in urban areas? It is known that such programs exist, as these regions are still under the research jurisdiction of land grant universities. The mass of agricultural production occurs outside of the city, but the mass of people the cooperative extension is intended to serve, by sheer right of residency, live inside the city. Urban agriculture, for which many artifacts have already been posted by this class on The Asthma Files (including at least one cooperative extension bulletin), comes to mind as a salient issue for which the cooperative extension service would be aiming information. Though cooperative extension bulletins in this field are ubiquitous, I am curious to see how they are utilized by city-dwellers involved in the agricultural processes. Are urbanites aware of these resources, or is this program poorly known outside of traditionally agricultural communities? If the information is utilized, is it adequate, and is it adapting to new needs of urban agriculture as they are uncovered?

After reading Maria Puig de la Bellacasa’s “Making time for soil,” I have found great inspiration in the need to embrace agriculture as a literal “ground-up” process. If urban agriculture is to be successful, that is, long lasting and maintainable, in addition to productive and sustainable, taking the time to farm soil before crops or livestock may be necessary, despite our neo-bucolic image of community gardens and backyard chicken coops. How can best practices of soil care be delivered from researchers to urban farmers? Can the cooperative extension drive a movement towards taking care of soil before we attempt further propagation?

Finally, although agriculture may be the dominant field serviced by cooperative extension, it certainly is not the only field this program assists. Land grant universities typically dictate research in forestry and natural resources, where environmental and climate change are undoubtedly receiving attention. My primary artifact, “Environment and Natural Resources, Sustainable Energy, and Climate Change,” a website of the Cornell Cooperative Extension, demonstrates that climate change information is being delivered through cooperative extension, but the primary audience is the professional agricultural community, not ordinary citizens that must understand and cope with environmental issues. Land grant universities also typically dictate research in home economics/human ecology, which ranges far outside the traditional realm of domestic issues (although also quite salient) to others that we may associate professionally with social work and public health. Could cooperative extension, or a system built in the same model, be used to ready urban areas for climate change? What is needed from the citizen end and research end, and what gaps in the transmission must be filled?


Puig de la Bellacasa, Maria. (2015). Social Studies of Science. Making time for soil: Technoscientific futurity and the pace of care. Social Studies of Science, 45 (5), 691-716.

Cornell Cooperative Extension. (2017). Environment and Natural Resources Sustainable Energy, and Climate Change.





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