In 1914, Congress established the Cooperative Agricultural Extension Service. This unique and complex educational system is a three-way cooperative relationship between the U.S. Department of Agriculture, land-grant colleges and universities, and several thousand county governments. The Extension Service was created to disseminate scientific information (generated at the land-grant institutions) to farmers and their families in order to improve agricultural production and the quality of rural life. In recent years, however, Extension's leadership has made a commitment to expand the system's operations in urban areas. This expansion has sparked an intense debate regarding the interpretation of Extension's mission. Using various approaches to statutory interpretation as an analytical framework, this article seeks to answer the question, Is Extension's urban expansion a failure of leadership or a responsiveness to changing times?
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