An interesting program that could work in the U.S.

This article, "Urban farms empower Africa,"subtitled "Aid providers in Congo and elsewhere are discovering that lessons in farming can succeed where food handouts have not," is slightly mistitled. It should be "urban gardens." The article describes a sound reworking of food aid towards empowerment and food security, greening, building social capital, etc.

For another take on this, see "Principal helps village feed itself." Apparently the idea of Agricultural Extension has never taken off in Africa, despite the billions of dollars spent in the 1960s and 1970s on the Green Revolution. See "A home-grown solution to African hunger."

In the United States, the field of technical assistance and organizational development has its antecedents in the Agricultural Extension program and the creation of the Land-Grant College system in the United States.

The classic work in outlining the process of innovation diffusion--done by Everett Rogers (not Malcolm Gladwell)--has its roots in agriculture and the agriculture extension program.

It's funny because I was at a private conference last week on farmers markets, and I was impressed with how disconnected the programs were from the state level departments of agriculture and the extension programs within their regions. I said that the whole field of "community development" grew out of rural development initiatives coming out of Extension.

Maybe Extension programs are now pretty disconnected? But there is a tremendous legacy to learn from, and an infrastructure. E.g., the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, like its sister organizations in other parts of the country, produce a wide variety of publications and programs usable by people and organizations anywhere, rural or not...

It was Agricultural Extension that led to massive increases in farming productivity that reduced the cost of food, and the number of people required to farm to produce enough food to feed the nation. (I know that today there are issues, and about scale and agribusiness.)