Pictures of chickens, flowers, wheat, a boy looking through a magnifying glass, irrigation pipe, soybean pods, and fruits and vegetables.

Cooperative Extension Service

Search | Publications | Jobs | Personnel Directory | Links
County Offices | Departments

About Us

Find Us

For the Media

Agriculture

Business & Communities

Families & Consumers

Health & Nutrition

Home & Garden

Natural Resources

4-H Youth Development

4-H Programs
4-H State Policy Handbook
Kids Go-4-It
Youth Education
Volunteer Organizations
C. A. Vines 4-H Center

Life Skills Evaluation
Links
Newsletters

Public Policy Center

For Faculty & Staff

Giving

Dale Bumpers College
of Agricultural, Food &
Life Sciences

Division Home

Agricultural Experiment
      Station Home

Cooperative Extension
      Service Home

Basis for 4-H Work

•  Because Cooperative Extension's youth program, 4-H, is not mentioned in the wording of the Smith-Lever Act, questions and concern about the legal basis of 4-H work have been raised. To explore these questions we study the intent of the United States Congress as its members drafted the original Smith-Lever Cooperative Extension Act signed into law by President Wilson May 8, 1914. Its purpose:

to aid in diffusing among the people of the United States useful and practical information on subjects relating to agriculture and home economics, and to encourage the application of the same.

A definition of Extension is also provided:

That cooperative agricultural Extension work shall consist of the giving of instruction and practical demonstrations in agriculture and home economics.

•  In its present form, however, this section of the Smith-Lever Act has been amended to read: "agriculture and home economics and subjects relating thereto . . . ." Intended to cover 4-H and other Extension activities not mentioned specifically, this change of wording was made in 1953. The addition is explained in the report of the House Committee on Agriculture accompanying the proposed consolidation of laws relating to Cooperative Agricultural Extension work. In the words of the report:

The phrase "and subjects relating thereto" is added to the language of the Smith-Lever Act to make certain that the new legislation will authorize all those extension activities, such as 4-H Club work, education in rural health and sanitation, and similar aspects of the manifold extension program heretofore authorized and now being carried on under existing law.

•  Section 1404 of the National Agricultural Research, Extension and Teaching Policy Act of 1977 (7U.S.C. 3103) further helps to clarify that youth development, including 4-H clubs, is a program area of concern to Congress and that it has been identified as a responsibility of the U. S. Department of Agriculture in cooperative research, Extension and teaching efforts. 4-H is an Extension education program for youth that provides one of the major audiences and structures for reaching the basic objective of youth development as well as meeting future needs in agricultural system productivity, natural resources, energy, human nutrition, and international understanding.

1 For an historically complete account of youth activities in the demonstration and Extension movement see: Alfred Charles True, A History of Agricultural Extension Work in the United States 1785-1923 (Washington: United States Government Printing Office, 1928); Franklin M. Reck, The 4-H Story -- A History of 4-H Club Work (Ames, Iowa: The Iowa State College Press, 1951); United States House of Representatives, Hearings, Report, and Debate: Smith-Lever Act of 1914 (Reproduced October 1959 by the Virginia Agricultural Extension Service, Blacksburg, Virginia); Cooperative Agricultural Extension Work . . . Report [To accompany H. R. 7951.] 63d Congress, 2d Session, House Report 110, 13 p. (Submitted by Rep. Asbury F. Lever, December 8, 1913.)