54 THE COUNTY AGENT'S SERVICES 



tern slides or a blackboard, and accompanied by lecture 

 and explanation it may be very useful. A crowd can be 

 more surely obtained and interest can be more easily main- 

 tained with the moving picture and this may be its chief 

 value in extension teaching. 



FARM VISITS 



After all the great advantage of the spoken word as a 

 means of extension, lies in the fact that it is personal, that 

 it means a direct contact between man and man. The 

 farm visit or the call of the county agent at a farm to 

 discuss problems or to answer questions has this advantage 

 with the added one of being on the ground where the prob- 

 lem exists. This phase of county agent work would be 

 ideally cared for, if it could all be done by personal dis- 

 cussion with the farmer on his own farm. But experience 

 shows that an agent is able to make only about five hun- 

 dred farm visits in a year in the average county. As there 

 are usually from three to five thousand farmers in a county 

 one visit a year to one in six or eight of them will hardly 

 suffice to meet the need. Moreover, such intensive personal 

 work is expensive in both time and travel. Nor can it 

 meet the need for group work, especially in the fields of or- 

 ganization and marketing. 



OFFICE CALLS 



The office call is in some respects even a better method 

 of teaching than the farm visit, although it has the dis- 

 advantage of not being on the ground where the problem 

 exists. It is a better measure of the farmer's real interest 

 and need for help, because it is an indication of apprecia- 

 tion of the need and requires initiative on his part to 



