DATELAND - Yuma County is the heart of 4-H country, where agricultural education meets extracurricular activities.
And it is where the University of Arizona's reductions to Cooperative Extension and 4-H programs have cut the deepest.
Once there were four people working in the local Cooperative Extension service. Now there's one.
Classes ranging from speechmaking to cake design survive, but it is becoming harder to get anyone to come out to this town 67 miles east of Yuma to teach them.
"We're patching things together here," said Tim Gilliland, a member of the local 4-H volunteer leadership board and a teacher at Desert Mesa Elementary School in Yuma. He has five 4-H'ers among the 52 students in his fifth-grade class."It's the 'make-do.' We're making do here."
The demise of 4-H around Arizona reflects profound changes under way in the state's university system as it struggles to move up in a cutthroat world of research and technology. These days, pigs and cows are out. Nanotechnology and biomedical sciences are in.
Similar stories are repeated throughout Arizona, where the University of Arizona has chosen to deal with budget cuts and a changing philosophy by, among other things, cutting 4-H positions. UA's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, which includes all 4-H programs around the state, saw its funds for programs go from about $39 million in 1990 to less than $34 million in June. The money available for salaries dropped from nearly $49 million in April 2002 to about $45.5 million in June 2003.
The cuts came as a shock despite indications that the university was becoming less agricultural and more high-tech. And despite the Arizona Board of Regents "Changing Directions" plan, which showed UA moving away from agricultural roots of cattle, cotton and citrus.
Club is a way of life
4-H is more than an activity in Yuma County. It is a life.
For three months every year, the Yuma Valley and the adjacent Imperial Valley in California grow 100 percent of the nation's fresh produce.
The 4-H programs in the county have grown to include computer training and model rocketry, but rearing animals still means the most.
With the cuts, running the programrests on the shoulders of 350 volunteers and one very busy woman who works, the volunteers say, between 60 and 90 hours a week.
That means calls from local 4-H chapter leaders about livestock issues aren't getting returned quickly. Subjects that used to be offered everywhere are offered only in some places: 70 percent of Dateland Elementary School District's 200-plus students used to be enrolled in 4-H; now only 40 percent are.
"I was surprised to see it take the hit it did," says Pat Koury, superintendent of the Dateland Elementary School District and a leader of a local 4-H swine club.
"You work in public schools and you're used to people beating on them," Koury added. "But I was surprised they would go and beat up on a youth program."
4-H has been a part of Yuma County for more than 50 years, and it is so woven into the fabric of the agriculturally based communities that separating the two would be impossible.
Students here wake up early, go to the animal lab that volunteers built behind the school. They feed the pig they're grooming for the county fair, go to class, play sports and feed the pig again.
No one to ask
The budget cuts were hard.
The end result is seen in Yuma County, where the answers are not expressed in exact numbers (which aren't available), but in personal stories.
"When we had a problem in 4-H and we didn't know the answer, we'd look to the 4-H person in the county office for an answer," says Donna Johnson of Somerton, who leads a club in which kids care for steers.
"Like now, we have a swinepox thing. If (the former extension employee) was here, I'd call him and ask."
But he was not offered more employment by the university and his position was not filled when he left. So who do they call?
"Each other. Or the Internet," Johnson says.
The Yuma chapters are not wanting for money. The local leadership board manages to raise about $90,000 a year, most of which goes for scholarships. But they're wanting for advice.
On how to do things. On new ideas to try. And on guidance on what the state wants them to do.
"We have a strong program, now. Our program could be so much stronger if we got back what we used to have, or even part of what we used to have," Gilliland said.
Volunteers save club
The fact is that life goes on in 4-H, and the changes are subtle. . Another fact is that if you're a kid, it probably hasn't changed your life all that much.
On this day, the sun is setting washed-out yellow in Yuma, and five high school students are washing their steers.
They are not farm kids, but city kids who have grown up in a semi-rural area and have been in 4-H since they were young.
They are people like Carmen O'Donnel, 15, who loves animals. She does ballet, tap and jazz dancing, but also comes every day to take care of the steer she's raising for auction after the county fair. Her mother works two jobs but drives her to the house where the steer is kept. This is important to Carmen, her mother says. 4-H has done so much for her. It has given her confidence and taught her responsibility.
That's what the parents often say.
"Usually people just go home and sleep after school," Carmen says, "I have to come and do all this first."
Carmen took out a loan to buy the steer. When she sells it at auction, she'll use the proceeds to pay back the loan and the other expenses. The rest will go toward her eventual college tuition.
Another student who lives down the street has made her 4-H project into a business, selling soap made of goat milk. But agricultural education and activities are a tough row to hoe right now.
"It's been pretty miserable, actually," says Steve Elrod of Somerton, one of the members of the volunteer leadership board. "We never really got funding from UofA but we need someone to coordinate all the state programs we have."
Parrott, who has driven her little white pickup 70,000 miles on 4-H business since 2002 puts it another way:
"I can understand funding cuts, but we've just been hit really hard," she says. "If we didn't have the volunteers, we wouldn't have a program at all."
Reach the reporter at judd.slivka@arizonarepublic.com or (602) 444-8097.
- Updated: January 7, 2004
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