Competence of Agricultural Extension Assistant Agents

Abstract Agricultural extension assistant agents play a crucial and strategic role in assisting with agricultural development initiatives. This complies with agricultural extension assistant agents’ primary responsibility, supporting Civil Servant Agriculture Extension Workers as per the sub-district extension program. Therefore, to supervise government initiatives, agricultural extension agents especially agricultural extension assistant agents as the spearhead of agricultural development need to improve their competencies. The study aims to: (1) identify the quality of agricultural extension assistant agents’ extension services, (2) identify the competence of agricultural extension assistant agents, and (3) analyze the relationship between the quality of extension and the competence of agricultural extension assistant agents. The research design used is explanatory research. A survey is used as the data collection approach. The research population is the entire workforce of agricultural extension assistant agents in Serang Regency. The samples are 40 agricultural extension assistant agents chosen at random. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were used in the data analysis. Spearman’s Rank correlation analysis is used for data analysis. The findings indicate that the majority of agricultural extension assistant agents have bachelor’s degrees with over five years of work experience and achievement is their motivation for becoming an extension agent. The agricultural extension assistant agents’ exterior attributes include having attended more than four training programs and mentored over 15 farmer groups. The effectiveness of the extension work is demonstrated by the fact that over 20 meetings were held in the previous month, the extension agents often used two different extension methods, and the extension materials were user-friendly for the target audience. The personal, sociocultural, andragogy, and communication competencies of agricultural extension assistant agents, according to respondents’ assessments are all rated as good. The extension resources are strongly connected to the creative and interpersonal communication skills of agricultural extension assistant agents.