Pathology of Agricultural Extension Programs during and beyond Covid-19 and its impact on Agricultural Development

The Covid-19 disease has led to many problems and adversities around the world. The agricultural extension and education has also faced problems to provide its services according to its mission of transferring knowledge to farmers during Covid-19 pandemic. Thus, the pathology of agricultural extension programs during and beyond Covid-19 and its impact on agricultural development was the aim of current research. The research is applied in terms of purpose and follows the qualitative paradigm. The qualitative method used is a hybrid of grounded theory and the Fuzzy-Delphi technique. The s tatis tical population of the research was the agricultural extension and education and rural development experts of the agricultural jihad of Hamadan province, as well as the faculty members of extension and rural development. The sampling method in this research was purposive based on theoretical saturation. The main data collection tool was semi-s tructured interviews. The collected data were firs t coded and then validated through the Fuzzy-Delphi technique. The results of the research showed that the harms of agricultural extension programs during and beyond Covid-19 were: Problems in providing face-toface extension services, lack of readiness of agricultural extension to adopt virtual education, low effectiveness of virtual education in providing extension content, reducing the profitability of the agricultural sector, endangering non-agricultural jobs and reducing face-to-face communication. On the other hand, the Covid-19 disease created opportunities related to development of virtual education sys tems during Covid-19 and changing the pattern of agricultural crops. Based on the results of the research, in order to the resilience of the agricultural extension and education sys tem in the face of possible future events such as Covid-19, the platform of virtual education should be s trengthened for the continuous and effective implementation of extension programs.