Extension has evolved a great deal over time moving from its roots as a specialised profession to becoming a recognised discipline with its own frameworks, research, and methodologies. This shift has broadened its impact, making extension principles relevant beyond just dedicated practitioners. But what does this change mean for the future of agricultural innovation? In this episode, we explore how extension has evolved—drawing parallels with project management—and what this means for those working to enable change in agriculture.
Before we dig into more details, it’s important to define what we mean by profession and discipline. At its simplest, a discipline creates knowledge and professions apply it. The Extension Capacity and Capability project highlighted the evolving role of extension within the Australian agricultural sector. The project results demonstrated the shift of extension practised by a select group of specialists to a broader discipline embedded across multiple roles and industries. The findings showed that while dedicated extension practitioners remain critical, extension skills are increasingly expected of researchers, agribusiness professionals, and policymakers.
The project results revealed the need for structured learning pathways, professional development, and support networks to build extension capability across sectors. We found there was also a growing demand for multidisciplinary approaches, where technical knowledge is integrated with social and behavioural science to drive on-farm change.
Traditionally, extension was seen as the domain of government-employed advisors who largely worked directly with farmers to share research and best practices. Extension was considered a profession, with a focus on technical expertise in agriculture and one-on-one advisory work. However, over time the complexity of agricultural systems has increased and there are new learning theories that help us support on-farm change. Today, extension is recognised as a discipline that incorporates technical knowledge, change theory, social science, and facilitation skills. This is evident in the development of structured models such as the Extension Model of Practice.
This shift means that extension is no longer solely the responsibility of dedicated extension officers. Instead, extension principles, frameworks and processes are used by researchers, policy makers, agribusiness professionals, and even farmers themselves to drive innovation and change. Only a few universities and training organisations still offer extension as a distinct field of study, with formal qualifications and academic research reinforcing its status as a discipline. However, many practitioners already have an undergraduate or postgraduate degree, and are more interested in seeking on-the-job practical training to improve their capability, rather than seeking another formal qualification.
As an aside, project management has followed a similar trajectory. Initially, it was seen as a profession relevant to sectors like construction and engineering, where trained specialists ensured the successful delivery of complex projects. Over time, it became clear that structured project management principles—such as defining scope, managing risks, and stakeholder engagement—were applicable across industries.
Today, project management is a discipline taught in universities, codified in methodologies like PRINCE2, PMBOK and Agile, and embedded into a wide range of professions. It’s no longer just the domain of certified project managers; rather, professionals in fields like healthcare, IT, and agriculture use project management frameworks and processes to guide their work.
The recognition of extension as a discipline has important implications for how we build capacity and capability in the sector. Rather than viewing extension as a set of skills that only certain professionals need, we now see extension as a capability that can be embedded across organisations and industries. This shift builds a more flexible and resilient agricultural innovation system, where extension principles are applied not just by extension professionals, but by anyone involved in facilitating change and innovation.
So just as organisations now expect their teams to have basic project management skills, we should expect that more people involved in agricultural research, agribusiness, and policy understand and apply extension principles in their work.
Our point though is to highlight the consequences of recognising extension as a discipline. It means investing in development of extension through education, frameworks, and professional development, and not just for those with ‘extension’ in their job titles. We think this means anyone who contributes to innovation and change in agriculture needs to understand and be able to use extension principles and practices.
Well, you’ve read our thoughts, now we’d like to hear yours! Add a comment below and tell us—have you noticed the shift of extension from a profession to a discipline? How has this played out in your own work? And what lessons can we take from project management or other disciplines? We don’t want this to be just a one-way conversation—so join in by sharing your thoughts and experiences with us!
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Resources
AgriFutures Australia. (2024). Australian Extension Capacity and Capability – A Map and a Gap Analysis. Available online.
Excellent article! Extension is a critical skill in today’s multidisciplinary/pluralistic Agri food sector. Service providers need to master the extension tools and techniques to effectively address changing needs of their clients. Innovation and technology are essential to move ahead in our ever changing and challenging world.
Thanks for your positive feedback Jeet!
Good
Over the years, agri extension is changing and taking new roles and priorities.
Thanks for your feedback!
I like this distinction between discipline and role. I think the ‘term’ extension is still really important as this is a term that many people relate to and find their ‘community of practice’ in. The analogy with project management is a good one – and, as you say, many of the the skills that are recognised as needed in ‘extension’ also need to be understood and used by those across the traditional ‘RDE’ and commercial sectors. The sad part is the lack of exposing students to some of these needs/skills in their undergraduate degree – hence the need for an… Read more »
Thanks for your feedback Jeff! I agree it’d certainly be useful to have a way for people to easily track the training they’ve done and get recognition for it.
More and more in the Caribbean context, extension is being acknowledged as a discipline. But, not all extention workers recognise that they are actually in a profession. We in research are utilising programmes and projects to build capacity and help extension workers learn new techniques in extension using innovation as ICTs and to open their eyes to the changing environment and the applicability if new tools. It is important for us to help them understand their value and the importance of their work with farmers. It is a significant contribution to our food cycle and nation building. Thanks Prof. James
Thanks for sharing your perspective from the Caribbean, Adelle!
There is a growing discipline/profession/science of Science Communication out there too, and the Venn-diagram with it and extension would have a massive overlap. Otago Uni has a School of Science Communication (https://www.otago.ac.nz/science-communication?) and its been 2 steps forward, 1 back, but it now seems to be growing steadily. I think it has faced the same challenges as Extension did back in the day – a belief that knowing *what* is the same as knowing *how* – ie that those that know the research are automatically the best to communicate it to others. This is an interesting paper for example: https://jcom.sissa.it/article/pubid/Jcom0903(2010)C03/… Read more »
That’s an interesting point Aaron, and there is a lot of overlap between the two. It seems to me that science communication usually seeks to inform and inspire curiosity, while extension can do that but also seeks to support decision-making and behaviour change. I’m sure there are many things we could learn from them and others like health promotion.
The modern theories of science communication have moved on from just what they called the ‘deficit model’ (that we’d call ‘tech transfer’) and stress the important of Design Thinking, centering the user/audience in development and “dialogue, engagement and participation”.
Communication, like Extension, is taken to mean a two-way process.
There really seems little distinction now, to me.
(Which is part of the reason for resistance from elsewhere in the science/research community I think, moving away from the ‘Tablets of Stone’ view 🙂 )
Oh, that is interesting! And of course Community Based Social Marketing is another interesting intersection.
I wonder how we might all work together to further develop our understanding and application of these common principles? As opposed to building walls and slinging mud at the other camp?
It’d be interesting to attend some of their conferences and professional development activities as a start.
Thanks for sharing. I also notice these changes in the CGIAR system. Many CGIAR researchers work on extension and advisory services. There is a good number of CGIAR researchers who are doing a great extension work as well. For me, the worrying trend is the increasing absence of professionalism in extension. When extension is ‘everybody’s business’, the ‘disciplinary development’ of extension becomes ‘nobody’s business’. Now we are seeing too many ‘extension activities’ with little commitment to doing it right.
I hear what you say Million about the growing lack of professionalism, and that is a challenge. I often see people trying to do too many extension activities that are not directly related to the outcomes they seeking. We call this ‘random acts of extension’.
Good piece to come by. Thank you for sharing. The two concepts “Discipline and Profession” are both relevant in the field of Extension. Knowledge is power and it’s application is germane to successful practices.
Great, thanks for your feedback Olaniyi!
The changing nature of Agriculture is also calling for changing in Extension models and practice.
So true, Olaniyi!
I’m studying Agricultural Extension and in my final year. I’m proud and glad to be part of this field.
That’s great to hear Tina… I hope it goes well for you!