an extension system attached to a seed or fertilizer company, to a bank,

etc. The agency can turn the voucher in to the government for cash.

Another feature of the system is that the extension systems are required

to prepare detailed financial analyses of farm accounts to identify

profitable farms and farm activities. In Guatemala, a careful review

of farmer tests is being conducted by the Institute of Agricultural Science

and Technology to assure feedback.

 While farmers are knowledgeable, they are not omniscient; nor

are scientists and highly trained subject matter specialists irrelevant.

Indeed, precisely because farmers are knowledgeable, the information

that they demand is often highly technical and very specialized. Sometimes

farmers ignore extension agents not because they are unwilling to change,

but because they suspect that the extension agent does not have suitably

specialized technical information. In the Indian Punjab, for example,

progressive farmers go directly to researchers at the agricultural university,

In Finland farmers demand personalized suggestions from animal nutrition-

ist and forestry management specialists.

 Thus, an extension system that learns from farmers must also

include highly trained subject matter specialists. In both Japan and

China, the policies of expanding farmers' inputs have not prevented the

development of professional extension systems using academically trained

personnel. In Japan, by 1889 professional extension agents had replaced

veteran farmers as "itinerant instructors." In China, ideological

pressures against professionalization have been strong, particularly in

certain years (e.g., 1958), but academic training in agriculture has

continued, and graduates have been constantly placed in research and