ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the long-term meshing of functional activities and organizational roles of agricultural researchers, extension specialists, and county extension agents. It describes changes underway in the land grant university system that seek to maintain effective links between research and technology delivery. Attenuation of ties between research and extension programs paradoxically may involve greater pressure on university researchers to make themselves more accessible to producers. William Sims, extension specialist at the University of California, has observed that the university contributed to tomato harvesting technology in four areas: variety of tomatoes, harvesting machinery, cultural practices, and postharvest technology. Interviews with persons both within and outside the land grant universities suggest that farmers and other clients are turning increasingly to extension specialists and researchers at the land grant university for answers to agricultural technology problems because of the increasing complexity of agriculture.
