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Agricultural extension may be traced back from the Spanish regime, when
the Granja modelos or model farm was introduced. Granja modelos were simply
experimental or demonstration centers for farmers during the 19th century.
When the Americans came at the turn of the century, extension services
were expanded by creating the Bureau of Agriculture, with the Administrative
Division, doing the extension service program. In the succeeding years,
important changes took place like the creation of Demonstration and Extension
Division which included farmer’s cooperative, rural credit, marketing and animal
insurance in 1918; and the splitting of the Bureau of Agriculture into Bureau of
Plant Industry and the Bureau of Animal Industry in 1928. The agricultural
extension division was placed under the Bureau of Plant Industry and later on
renamed agricultural division in 1932. This division carried out extension services
up to the assumption of Mr. Manuel L. Quezon, as President of the
Commonwealth in 1938.
Republic Act No. 188 of 1967 decentralized the functions of BAEx and
granted autonomous powers to the local government unit to appoint their
respective provincial agriculturist and municipal extension workers.
In the barangay level, the barangay captain heads the extension system
with the barangay councilor for agriculture as his operational assistant, together
with the extension worker assigned in the barangay.
The farm family as cited by Medina and Ancheta (1978) can be described
typically as consisting of six (6) to seven (7) members on the average. This is
quite a large family size which stems from the belief that children are gifts and
blessings from God, economic assets, bundles of joy and insurance in the future
of parents.
It was also averred by the same authors that rural parents have an
average of six years of schooling. The implication of this level of education can
be multi-dimensional. For one, it becomes a barrier to acquiring knowledge on
new farming and homemaking practices; a factor for rural parents to resist
change and stick to their traditional ways; prevent them from trying a new
practice even at reasonable risks because they would not want to be different
from the others; and a feeling of fatalism or strong ability to change events
affecting their lives and that life is controlled by some outside force in which there
is little they can do thereby leaving everything to chance or (“Bahala Na”).
4. Visit your municipal agricultural office (MAO) and describe its extension
program, project and activities.
Answers to SAQ #1
1.1 Spanish Regime – establishment of Granja modelos or model
farms
4. The major concerns constituting the focus of rural family development can be
cited as:
a. improving the health and nutrition of the members of the family;
b. ways to relieve poverty;
c. ways to increase productivity;
d. population problem; and
e. generally speaking, the well-being of the rural people