What changed in public extension in the last decade? The case of Manisa province in Turkey

In this study, the changes in public extension services were examined through the data of two conducting researches in Manisa province of Turkey in different years as 1996 and 2007. Turkish extension service is influenced by the general, and training-visit approaches which were employed in the past few decades. These approaches are mainly directed to conventional production and yield increases, by using a top-down process that gives little place for human resources development and sustainable agriculture. These general situations clearly seen in Manisa province, one of the first extension organizations had been established in Turkey in 1943. In the study, some personnel characteristics, time allocated to extension, target groups and objectives, and problems encountered in extension were compared in terms of both periods in Manisa.