They are trained by and share offices with the 1862 county extension agents. Their purpose is to work one on one with farmers who are outside the normal channels of extension information. Each one is supposed to work with about 30 farmers, but some have as many as 100. Many of their clients have never kept any records or had a soil test. These are people who would never go to an extension meeting or call the extension agent.
Illiteracy is common.
The assistants start from scratch with a farm plan and work with each client for five years, after which they can be mainstreamed into the traditional extension system. In that time most of the farmers double or triple their net income. Many of them go from being disenfranchised to being farm leaders in the community. We started these trainings for our small farm assistants who would come back from the farmers with questions they had to answer. As time went by, we continued listening to the farmers or the people who work directly with the farmers to define the training topics.