Some considerations about agricultural extension as a tool for agricultural education

The transformation of agriculture has been taking place in Latin American countries in a context of technological changes, accelerated trade growth and transnational production patterns, which has led to the need to review the concepts of agricultural extension, working methods, organizational instruments, and relationships between actors and the new agroecological techniques that have been implemented for the sustainable growth of agricultural systems.

Agricultural extension in Venezuela has not been the basis of policies, plans or actions of the Venezuelan state, but has responded to agricultural models and policies where little emphasis has been given to technology transfer actions, direct technical assistance and training, aimed at improving capacities to solve production and development problems.

In this sense, in the geographical area where we are located South of Lake Maracaibo in the State of Zulia, the agriculture that has been developing has suffered from certain flaws that prevent its total development, the typical farmer continues to sow with the same systems and means of production as in the past, the strategic agricultural production plans that have been formulated; they have not yielded what was expected due to the lack of a planning that takes into account all the factors that intervene in production.

Consequently, in the Municipality of Colón in the State of Zulia, agriculture has progressively decreased in planted area due to the fact that agricultural lands are almost intensively used for livestock farming, when their productivity could be higher if they were dedicated to rational agriculture. On the other hand, many producers, due to the lack of adequate land, are practically forced to sow on soils that do not even have a livestock vocation, giving rise to problems of soil degradation, due to insufficient applied agricultural research to be able to increase productivity.

From our point of view it is important to make a series of profound changes in the way and form of agricultural extension, we can start by building a new research system that involves three essential components such as (research-extension-production) and take into account the value of the human being and the multiple interactions between the environmental, the socio-cultural and the economic. For this reason, it is important to involve institutions such as universities to participate and help improve research areas and that from these they favor farmers to improve the use of the information used.

For this reason, it is therefore necessary to have research and extension systems that allow the production and reproduction of knowledge for the benefit of society, based primarily on tropical conditions and socio-diversity, of rural communities, cultures, customs, skills, organization and criteria for the marketing of their agricultural and livestock products.

With the above described, it should be promoted to obtain changes that allow universities to provide their students with a better vision towards the labor field, with professional training at different levels with criteria of high quality, excellence and that the interaction with agricultural communities contributes in this way to the full development of agricultural systems. Participation allows rural producers, individually and collectively, to express needs or demands that concern them; defending common interests, working together to achieve their objectives and actively involving themselves in the social, economic and technological processes in which they are immersed.

Finally, dear readers, according to Bolivar (2006), in order for farmers to increase food production and food security, it is necessary to improve their access to support systems, such as credit, technology, extension and agricultural education. Small farmers and those with limited resources, both men and women, are often isolated from these essential support systems despite their enormous potential and the crucial role they have in the agricultural sector,