Agricultural Leadership Development: From Networking to Application

Agricultural leadership programs have been widely supported by both the public and private sector and have been praised for the “networking” they provide. However, is there any community benefit? Could these programs be doing more? This paper provides some insight into these issues by looking at contributions of the related research. First, a connection is made between social capital theory and the value of networking. Then, agricultural leadership programs are discussed in terms of benefits they provide to participants and the communities that they serve. Finally, an application component is proposed for use in agricultural leadership programs as a way of improving the effectiveness for the communities that support them.