ELLICOTTVILLE — It’s Mark Holt’s second time working for Cornell Cooperative Extension.
Three weeks ago, Holt started working at the Cattaraugus County Cooperative Extension offices as a community educator for agriculture and horticulture.
His earlier work for Cornell Cooperative Extension was 27 years ago in Chemung County, where he served as an agricultural Extension agent. Prior to that, he worked for two years in the Peace Corps as a volunteer in the Philippines. Before that, he worked as a high school agriculture teacher in Virginia.
FROM THE CHEMUNG County Cooperative Extension, he joined the U.S. Department of Agriculture as training director in Guinea-Bissau in Africa in 1988.
“The USDA borrowed me from Cooperative Extension and loaned me to the Peace Corps,” he said in an interview with the Olean Times Herald on Tuesday, June 18 at the Cooperative Extension offices.
In 1989, Holt was sent to Gambia in West Africa, where he was associate director of the Peace Corps agriculture and rural development efforts, overseeing about 30 volunteers.
“The program made a difference,” he said. “They were trying to stop the desert from spreading.”
One program involved planting fruit trees, which not only held soil, but produced fruit for sale.
Next, Mr. Holt was sent to Western Samoa’s Cook Island, where he again served as associate director for agriculture and rural development.
Then, when the Soviet Union broke up in 1992, he was sent by the Peace Corps to Uzbekistan, where he helped set up the first training program for the Peace Corps.
“I was only there for six months,” Holt said. “Then I was promoted to country director to Turkmanistan. I had to set up an office, language training, find living sites and set up training. It was a very rewarding experience. I got to build the program from the ground up.”
His next assignment was country director in Kazakhstan, another former Soviet Republic, where he was in charge of 132 volunteers.
“It was a major expansion into 12 countries at once,” Holt said of the Peace Corps movement into the former Soviet republics. “The Peace Corps is still operating in many of these countries.”
Following Peace Corps rules that limit bureaucrats to eight years’ service, he left the Peace Corps and went to Washington, D.C., where he worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agriculture Service for 14 years.
One highlight of his Foreign Agriculture Service was a posting to Afghanistan, where he worked with the Afghan Ministry of Agriculture to restart their agriculture extension services. In all, he traveled to Afghanistan seven times between 2003 and 2007. There, he traveled with the deputy Agriculture secretary and a deputy USDA director.
“It was all a very good experience,” he said.
Holt said he wanted to move to this area to be closer to his mother and aunt, and when a job opened up in the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Cattaraugus and Allegany County, he looked into it.
“It’s a good fit with my horticulture and agriculture background,” he said.
Holt’s job came about after Cooperative Extension officials convinced the Cattaraugus County Legislature of the need for the position and other expertise the organization has not been able to provide at previous levels after most of the Cooperative Extension’s county funding was eliminated along with other contract agencies three years ago.
THE LEGISLATURE restored about $50,000 to Cooperative Extension to continue 4-H activities two years ago and this year added about $20,000 to the Cooperative Extension budget for a community educator for agriculture and for a Cornell vegetable team to split time between Cattaraugus and Allegany counties.
“We need to rebuild the program,” Holt said. “If you provide good customer service, people will support this.”
The Master Gardener program’s volunteers has been a great help for homeowners with gardening questions, soil testing and other home horticulture questions, he said.
“We hope to re-establish the master gardener training program,” he added.
The Master Gardeners staff a hotline to answer questions every Monday and Wednesday from 9 a.m. to noon. The phone number is 699-2377, ext. 127.
“People seem to be looking for nontoxic treatments” for the current gypsy moth caterpillar outbreak in southern part of the county, Holt said.
The Master Gardener program also is presenting free gardening lectures from 7 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesdays at the Nannen Arboretum behind the Cooperative Extension.
The Cornell Vegetable team is offering Wednesday Walks and Talks on different farms in Cattaraugus and Allegany counties.
Holt is looking forward to focusing Cooperative Extension attention I Cattaraugus County.
“Nobody’s been here for a while totally focused on Cattaraugus County,” he said. “I want people to be able to take full advantage of Cornell Cooperative Extension programs.”
He’s also looking forward to meeting people. “We’re lucky here in Cattaraugus County to have access to resources of one of the greatest research universities. I want to be a conduit for all those resources. I would like to see a well-supported program that people take advantage of.”
For a schedule of upcoming programs and other information, check the Cooperative Extension website at blogs.cornell.edu/ccecattall/.
(This story appeared in the June 18, 2012 edition of the Olean Times Herald and the June 27, 2012 edition of The Salamanca Press.)
