When I sat down to write this post, what emerged was a rather gloomy piece filled with warnings of what Michigan would lose if the executive budget proposal to cut MSU Extension’s (MSUE) and the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station’s (MAES) state funding in half came to fruition. Farmers would return to living in the dark ages! Without foreclosure prevention services, families would be out on the street! Children wouldn’t have 4-H anymore! Sniff. Honestly, you would have needed a tissue.
The problem was, I didn’t really believe it. I didn’t believe it because there are too many people in this state who care about MSUE and MAES and won’t just sit silently by, watching them go down the tubes. In the last year alone, literally hundreds of thousands of Michigan citizens benefitted in some way from MSUE and MAES programs. And if you look at the last decade, that number expands into the millions.
For some, the benefit has been huge, as was the case for the Harding family in Macomb County, who would have lost their home to foreclosure without help from MSUE housing coordinator Anne Lilla (see page 13 of MSUE’s annual report). For others, the benefit has been smaller, such as a 4-H kid learning how to sew or build a model rocket. Even that isn’t so small when you look beyond the model rocket to see that 4-H is really helping kids build confidence, responsibility, leadership and good citizenship. No, not really small at all.
So because of people like the Hardings and the 250,000 kids who participate in 4-H and the 360,000 people who receive nutrition education and everyone else who benefits from MSUE and MAES programs and research, I have faith. I have faith that they’ll speak up and tell their legislators all the good stuff MSUE and MAES do and exactly what would be lost if these programs lose such a huge chunk of their funding. That way, maybe my original “gloom and doom” post won’t ever have to see the light of day. But if it does, be sure to grab a tissue before you read it.
