The university of maine cooperative extension is a partnership of county, state, and federal government with smith-lever capacity funding and university match at the core

The Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded the University of Maine System $5.214 million under the Smith-Lever Extension Funding program (CFDA 10.511) on October 1, 2025. The award funds cooperative extension activities conducted through the University of Maine Cooperative Extension across all Maine counties, delivering research and outreach related to Maine's food system, including agriculture, aquaculture, food processing and distribution, business education, food safety, and human nutrition. The extension program operates diagnostic and research laboratories for veterinary diagnostics, aquatic animal health, arthropod diagnostics, and plant disease diagnostics serving agriculture, public health, communities, and wildlife. The University of Maine Cooperative Extension also administers 4-H youth educational programming and collaborates with Maine Sea Grant to provide research and programming to coastal Maine communities and fishing industries. The program serves special needs communities, racial minorities including Native Americans, and new immigrant communities. Performance runs through September 30, 2030, across Maine.

This partnership has given US the capacity to serve the people of maine for over 100 years. Today over 190 faculty and professionals contribute to outreach, research, and development and delivery of relevant programming to benefit the people of maine. Buoyed by a strong research partnership with the maine agricultural and forest experiment station, we ensure our research and extension programs meet local needs by grounding them with input from advisory groups, regular meetings with constituency groups, county extension advisory committees, and through direct faculty and staff interaction with stakeholders. By conducting extension programs in every maine county, we support umaine's public education and service role as a land- and sea-grant institution. Extension helps support, sustain, and grow the food-based economy, and conducts the most successful out-of-school youth educational program in maine through 4-H. We reach many of maine's most diverse people and we make special efforts to serve special needs communities, racial minorities including native americans, and new immigrant communities. Our programs continue to focus on five critical issues: maine food system: through research and outreach related to agriculture, aquaculture, food processing and distribution, business education, food safety, and human nutrition to create a safer, healthier, more accessible and increasingly productive food system. Through the marine extension team, we collaborate with maine sea grant to provide research and programming to coastal maine communities and fishing industries. Our diagnostic and research laboratories for veterinary diagnostics, aquatic animal health, arthropod, and plant disease diagnostics provides research contributions to agriculture, public health, communities, and wildlife. The lab benefits maine by protecting natural resource- and food-based economies, adding to food safety and human health, and providing unique diagnostic and testing services to farmers and the public; positive youth development: through 4-H programs with a focus on the stem disciplines to boost youth educational, career, and life success; sustainable community and economic development through programs related to small and home-based businesses, household resources, community assets, farm business management, natural resource-based industries, and commercial fisheries to increase the profitability and sustainability of maine's natural resource-based industries and provide research support to rural communities to understand and adapt to economic and demographic challenges; weather impacts by delivering new knowledge and technologies to help address and adapt to the effects of weather events; sustainable resources in agriculture and food sciences, forestry and wood products, fisheries and aquaculture, wildlife, outdoor recreation, and rural economic development to increase our understanding of and knowledge about maine's natural resources to help the state manage these resources sustainably.