PARTICIPANT: ...... Carolyn Kayum, and way back in 1995 we were looking at what we could do as farm women in the providence of Newfoundland. There weren't many of us, and we were scattered. So we put in for a government grant and we got organized. And we set up a group called Goosehead Farm Women's Association. From there, things started to roll. And because they gave us some money to organize a, I hope these are not my slides, because I don't know -- are you going to present it? Okay. Anyway, in order to get that money for the local group to organize we had to take some money to organize a provincial group. So that's how we got started. We organized a provincial group and the next thing we knew we had 5 regional groups and we had a provincial group at the top. And we drew members from each of the regional groups to form the provincial group. And from there, we got going and we've organized the Canadian Farm Women's Network in Canada. And the Cans is a member from Ontario. Now, unfortunately, we don't have all member providences on board, or all providences of Canada on board with us. But we do have seven member providences. And we do communicate back and forth through the providences. We have organized conferences. We have been part of the international conference. Matter of fact, Mary Seltz came to Canada in 1991 and visited with us at our 4th National Farm Women's Conference. And that was the time we ratified our national constitution. And Mary was very impressed with what we were doing and she went back to Australia and the rest is history. So, networking is very important. And through my role with Canadian Farm Women's Network, I have traveled to the North Sea area and I've met with women in Norway, and I still communicate with them, matter of fact, I e-mailed some information that I had hoped one of the women from Norway would come here. I communicate with women from England and Scotland. And so the networking goes on. I met a woman the from Mexico, who is working in Canada, and she had heard about us because she wanted to farm in Costa Rica. So the networking goes on. So I wasn't prepared to make a presentation, but somebody else jump in --

MEDIATOR: Is there anybody else that would have something that they could contribute to this? Share with everybody. Come on in.

PARTICIPANT: This is the last thing I expected to be doing. Just because I came late. My name is Farrah Anderson and I come from Wheaton Queens Land. I'm currently president of Queens Land World Women's Network. This is a network started up by a lady called Jan Darlington, as many of you may have seen her around the tracks. She's a very distinguished looking lady with very gray, beautiful gray hair, tall lady. She just was recognized a couple of weeks ago with the Tellstar Award for the outstanding woman in Queens Lands in agriculture. We're very grateful that other states have heard about this, this may go statewide and then perhaps national. Jan was our founding president of our network. She has huge shoes to follow. Our network is a network, it works very much like the lady that was just talking. We work through a state conference that we hold once a year. We communicate by faxes and phone. But the greatest thing that ever happened to us, was the advance of technology, even though I'm on a digital concentration set up out of Wheaton, I'm actually able to use e-mail. So the people in the US here have cost of ....... it's $7.00 an hour for me to download. I only use the e-mail section, I never use the Internet, as such, or the web for information, I simply can't afford it. The twenty cent connection fee every time I connect. I go on in the morning, download my mail lunch time, and night. And we're all suffering with scrolls here, all the Queens Land women anyway. Because we cannot get any Internet access. One of the other tools that we use is a group called Whaling, which is a group that goes right throughout Australia. It's a discussion group. It channels in a lot of information. We hear a lot of government grants, government programs, conferences, coming through this e-mail discussion group. We have people from Canada on that. We have people from Ireland. We have a couple from the UK. We have people from the States on that discussion group. So we get a lot of information in that way. That has actually got nothing to do with the network. One of the problems that was identified, and it was actually my own personal problem, was that in getting connected to the Internet, when you're in a remote community like I am, was a very difficult process. We've actually in coincide had the first teleworker, appointed from government, we actually had somebody working from the Office of Rural Communities, who is actually teleworking at a place called Lumrich, which is pretty close to me. It's one 177k's away. And Chris is also in our organization. Chris and I got together and Chris said you've got to get on e-mail, Barbara, just before I was elected president. So I had the computer which I've sort of self-taught myself. She came over one day and actually hooked me up with great excitement. I went through all those usual problems of doing all the ghastly things that you do with computers. The worst thing I ever did send an agenda sheet from the network to the whole group that goes all over the world. That was a bit embarrassing, but the was my worst bloop. So from that I realized straight away that one of the problems that rural women fight in isolated communities, or wherever they live, was to actually to do that connection step. At the same time our federal government made itself part of that telstrip, a big telecommunication service. And they immediately advertised funding through a program called Networking the Nation. So we, wherever there's money, the rural women sniff it out. So we thought that there had to be a project there for us. And so the project, which was very basic in the first place, the idea was to put an individual trainer into a remote community to go and connect rural women onto the Internet. That was how simple it was. That actually came out of my personal need. The, we applied for funding, and I liked the idea. So we were given $10,000. So we went to Queen Lands University of Technology, I did a consultancy on it, and wrote up the application. There it is. This has ended up a two and a half million dollar project. Its sitting in there for funding right now. It has lots of other avenues apart from that early principle that I put in there. And now it looks like we need a project manager, we need an administrator, about 6 workers on the ground, all hopefully rural women, all hopefully all around Queens Land. It has other components in it which I won't bore you with those. We will now at the end of July, whether we're successful, if we're successful, we will really raise the role in it. Thank you.

MEDIATOR: Does everyone have translation that needed it, by the way, just to make sure. Earphones? Yes. Okay. Good.

I am Leanne Powell, and Lola Marino is not with us, yet. I know she had several things that were going on with her Embassy in the Spanish Delegation. So, I'm sorry that she's not here, but I'm sure she'll be here in a few minutes. To get us started, our USDA participant for this workshop is the woman who is the Executive Director of the Small Farms Commission, and that's Jennifer Mualase. Jennifer has some copies of the Small Farms Commission that the United States has recently organized. And Jennifer's been working on this project for a year, a year now. One of the recommendations, and I'm sure many of the recommendations of the small farms report in the commission, have to do with us being better able to be accessible to women as the United States government. And I think that's a good motto. By the way, how many Americans we have? Okay. Australians, that's always my second favorite question. Great. And could we run through other countries folks are from? Trinidad, Canada, Kria, in the back, did we cover everybody? Ireland, wonderful. And Guatemala, wonderful. This is great. Well, as with many of the sessions, we're going to want you, particularly one called Communication Networks for Women, to get up and give us some of the models that are working in your countries, so that other women can take them back to theirs. And I see someone else I'd like to eye over here, it's Carol Ann Gregg. Everyone hasn't met Carol Ann, I'm sorry, I know you weren't prepared for this, but Carol Ann is the President of the American Agri Women. And I can't think of a group that does a better job of getting their message out. They lobby Capitol Hill, the lobby the administration, their state and local governments. And do a very good job of staying in touch with one another as well as what there local, state and federal governments. I want to give you a hand. And I'd also like to say the American Agri Women were going to be hosting the Second International Conference on Women in Agriculture, and it started planning process. And we're gracious enough to let the President's Interagency Council come together with them to be able to start doing this. So, and, Carol Ann and Jean Pattaman invited Jill Juan Thompson to actually do the announcement about the conference, there national conference in Michigan last year. So, anyway, I'm sure Carol Ann will have a lot to add as well. But, anyway, you don't want to hear from me, you want to hear from one another and you want to hear from Jennifer, let me assure you. So, Jennifer.

JENNIFER: Hello and howdy! I'm originally from Texas and grew up in a small town where my family raised cattle. Just a further background, I went to Texas A&M University and I have a degree in Agricultural Education, student-taught vocational agriculture before going into really the field of state of government and federal government. And I've been in Washington, D.C. for 7 years. First working for a Senator Lloyd Benson from Texas as a legislative assistant. And now I've been at the US Department of Agriculture for 5 years. And for the last year I've been working with the National Commission on small farms. And in January, this report was published and presented to Secretary Glickman. And inside the report are 8 policy goals. And done of these policy goals deals directly with outreach and communication. And it stated, conduct appropriate outreach through partnership to serve small farms and ranch operators. There are 29 members on this commission and 4 of them were women. Hopefully, you will be meeting some of them. Three of them are here, that's what I'm trying to say. Three of them are attending this conference, Kathleen Kelly from Colorado, Karen Armstrong-Cummings from Kentucky, and Marian Boland from Pennsylvania. And another member is Jackie Reed from the state of Washington. And they contributed greatly to the development of this report. As stated, outreach is very important. And it's one of the major policy goals of the Small Farms Commission felt that the Department itself needed to do a better job in letting folks have access to the programs of the Department. Also it felt that community-based organizations were a key to the success of programs at the Department. And many of the recommendations are dealing with networking of groups, such as Agri Women and other groups that could be done a little bit better. Because there are in areas where we heard that people wanting to get into farming, but yet did not have access to people that were knowledgeable and wanting to share information with them. And so when they found a group of farmers and they were a beginning farmer, they were quite excited about knowing the possibilities that they could get into farming. And so when the Commission heard these types of stories at there public hearings, they wanted to make certain that the Department of Agriculture was taking action to make certain outreach was done effectively. Another thing that is an important part of doing outreach, though, is that we need to identify who we want to reach out to. And so the Commission recommended that the Department take an effort to identify small farm and ranch operators in our country. What we found, the Commission found, is that the population of the farmers, the people in agriculture, has decreased by 300,000 people in the last 20 years. And that we need to be able to identify this group of farmers and ranch operators. Let's see, I have the figures in the report I just got to put my hand on it. I don't -- but it's like, um -- Yes, Ma'am?

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: Yes, um, Jennifer is the first name. Yezak is the middle name, that's spelled Y-E-Z-A-K. Last name is Molen, spelled M-O-L-E-N, and I was the Director, still am, of the National Commission on Small Farms. PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: Yes, that is the focus of the Commissions report, that, uh -- please state it again, your question or comment.

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: Uh, that speaking of this, the hope, several people that testified or came to speak to the Commission, felt like the Commission was the last hope for them. And, so the Commission members are strongly following the activities of the Department of Agriculture and how they're going to implement these recommendations. Going on with some of the areas that they talked about in the outreach section were establishing farmer advocates. There are so many rules and regulations that deal with credit issues, environmental issues, and yet, when you're trying to grow your products and market products, but yet have all these environmental laws and rules to follow. In some instances it would be helpful to have someone on the ground there that's accessible to help you go through these things and be an advocate for a group of farmers. May it be based on a regional basis or on a community-based organization. Speaking of credit issues, one of the things that the Commission felt that the Department of Agriculture needed to work better on was outreach with banks, cooperating banks through the different credit programs that we have at the Department of Agriculture, that banks need to have a better understanding of what small farmers needs are and to also have a better understanding of how the credit programs are run at the Department of Agriculture. Another area that the Commission wanted the Department to focus on is Risk Management Program Delivery. Maybe it's been discussed here at this conference about how a major agricultural legislation was passed in 1996 that started to have a more of a free market element does. Your risk management decisions are very important in this free market world and that those risk management educational programs need to be effective, and understood, and available to small farmers. Another area that was needing to be improved upon at the Department of Agriculture were making sure the materials presented to farmers, and presented to people that wanted to support farmers, was understood, in the correct language, to reflect the diversity here in the United States. Another element that, we hear about lawyers and teachers having to continuing education to stay in their professional career, also farmers should have the continuing education programs that are suited to the changes in environmental laws, to go back to that, or to the changes in trade issues. Or in the marketing atmosphere so that farmers are fully aware of the ongoing activities and the new research that is out there. So continuing education for farmers is important, the Commission felt. One specific area that the Commission wanted to bring out under outreach was about forestry issues, that with all of the woodlands in the United States, even small farms could have a small acreage of trees and yet do not know it's a resource to them unless they're educated about that. In that one section for the policy goal four, which stated, conduct appropriate outreach through partnerships to serve small farm and ranch operators, there were 22 recommendations. That was 22 of 146 recommendations that are in this report. I have left some copies at the National Agricultural Library Exhibit for people to pick up and I have a few here, and we'd be glad to share it and also talk about it with you some more during this afternoon session. Yes?

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: Her question is dealing, did the Commission talk about how small farms, how are they going to compete with the larger farm operations and larger corporations. And in Policy Goal 3, that is stated to promote, develop and enforce fair competitive and open markets for small farms. So, that is the overall goal there. Under this -- that's the major policy goal -- but, under this policy goal there are 29 different recommendations that deal with that. One of those is making sure that there is market enforcement. That there are laws on the books that would make certain that prices are being fairly developed, but, and, in that -- it's called the Packers and Stock Yard Act, here at, in the United States, and making sure that is correctly enforced. Also, the Commission wanted the Department of Agriculture to take a look at contract production and making sure that contracts between farmers and other agricultural business are fair to the producer. That the producer's not signing something that's going to be putting him in a position or her in a position that is not fair. And making sure folks are educated about what is a contract and what are your rights under making sure it's a good contract. The also talked in wanting to recommend mandatory price reporting for farmers. And in the arena of market development, there's several recommendations dealing -- making sure that ag based -- rural development, new businesses are agriculturally based. Sometimes businesses that are brought into rural areas are not based on the agricultural resources that are there, and wanting to emphasize that, of course value added agriculture is some recommendations that they talked about. One that I'm excited about, personally, or two of them in here, are making sure we develop local and regional food economies that people in a smaller area will become dependent upon the produce and the products that can developed in a region of a country and promoting that idea further in it's country. Sure?

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: On regarding local and regional on this? Um. One idea is about labeling, making sure that things are labeled that reflect a certain production practices like the State of Agricultural practices were done, that label could reflect that fairly. And, um, point of origin may be a topic of debate, but that is something that the Commission thought should be there. And like I said, growing factors. Were sustainable practices used, organic practices used making sure that labeling was, eco-labels has been talked about. Also, creating farmers markets across the country in a more open way, because it has been increasing, farmer's markets in our country, but making sure that it still continues to be on track. Another area, they're wanting to make certain is that, I don't know if you're familiar with the Women and Infants and Childrens Nutrition Program. Making sure the folks, the women, that are on this type of food assistance program have access to fresh produce and making that easier for them. Also, the federal government trying to make certain people have access to maybe institutions, having contracts with local producers to bring in their products locally. Not to go have contracts with far away states that have big based farmers. Uh huh?

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: Do you have a question? Yeah?

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: The definition of a small farm, a major discussion among the Commission members themselves, because should it based on acreage, should it be based on income, should it be based on other factors. And basically, they decided to describe it like this, and I'll read it from the report, it's farms with less than $250,000 gross receipts annually on which day to day labor and management are provided by the farmer and/or the farm family that owns the production or owns or leases the production assets. So, it was, idea that you had to gross a large amount of money to be able to make an income. And you're also making the management decisions yourself, for your property and products. Yes, ma'am?

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: This chart?

And just to clarify what the Commission said, it was a description and not a definition to like be used for farm programs. It's a description so that when the Department is trying to implement these recommendations they're focusing in on those types of farms that fall into that range.

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: The Commission was asked to study small farms. And they did talk about maybe changing the title of the there Commission of Family Farms or Independent Farms. But, so they did not, in this report, have a definition. I know the Department of Agriculture has several credit and financial programs that have a definition of family farms, and I'm not, I do not know that. I would have to bring that to another meeting or get someone to get that for you.

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: Yes, I have an e-mail address that I can leave up here for you to write down. Yes. Sure do.

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: Yes, uh-huh, or request one, right. Yes ma'am?

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: I'm sorry?

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: Yes. Yeah, right. It's small farm, all one word, small, farm all one word at USDA dot gov, right. Question? Yes, ma'am?

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: The ranch and a farm. She -- what's the difference in this country between a ranch and a farm. It depends a lot on where you live in our country. I come from a small town, like I said, in east Texas, is where I grew up. There's a lot of rainfall. And the plots of land are smaller, like my family, we have about 250 and some odd acres so, not all together either, and there's several plots. So, when I was growing up it was always a farm. But when you go out to west Texas and the western states where you're raising cattle on thousands of acres, those are considered a ranch. And that's how I, you know, developed the difference. But it is a regional difference in how you say it's a farm or a ranch. But mostly in the east they're considered farms, and in California, I think, they'd be farms, but where you raise livestock cattle are considered more like a ranch.

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: And that's a regional preference, I believe. Yeah. That would be a region -- because in south Texas where we grow a lot of fruits and vegetables, I've never heard them called a ranch. And we ..... south Texas. Yes, back there?

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: When you do read it, it does somewhat kind of, read it that way, and makes it, I guess that's -- the Commission wanted to make sure we were focusing in on the farm family and those types of farms as being a focus. And, um, because there was a lot of discussion about contract farming and employees and, um, but this was the description they could agree on.

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: It's just a description. They go on -- it's not intended for use as an eligibility guide line, it's, and this is a quote, it is intended only to generally describe the farm that we believe should be priority consideration by USDA with special emphasis on those of the greatest need to improve their net farm incomes, is what the Commission stated. And, um, and they did go on to recognize that small farms may vary by region and commodity, because that's -- and we -- there's a couple of descriptions that we used to hear about -- for example, um, the average farm with annual gross sales between 50,000 and 250,000 has a net cash income of only $23,159, is an average, that the economic research service provided some numbers for the Commission to look at. And that was just the average there. There is a chart also in the book about cash expenses and income as a percent of gross cash income by size of farm and folks may want to take a look at that as well.

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: It's called A Time to Act, a Report of the USDA National Commission on Small Farms. Yes. Yes, ma'am?

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: Yes. Yes. There were about, there were 29 people on the Commission and 15 of them were actually producers,

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: About 5 dairy farmers, really.

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: Right. The reason the Commissions chose A Time to Act, is that 20 years ago the Department of Agriculture wrote a report called A Time to Choose. And that report was one of those, sadly enough, the reports that stayed on the back of a bookshelf or in a storage closet for many years and was not acted upon. And so they wanted to make sure the Department of Agriculture really, like you said, kept this a living document that could be used at the Department and among community based groups and to make sure that the Department is working on these. Just as some additional information about the Commission on Small Farms, they will be coming, convening again in October, it looks like it, to receive a progress report from the Department of Agriculture, but also to do a report card. So, in other words, they're going to grade the Department on how well the outreach activity and the communication activities have improved since the report has been out since January. So, um, and, um -- so we're looking -- in a way looking forward to that, but also in a way that there will be some continuing some policy discussion, I mean, because there definitely are things that take legislation, things that take appropriations from our -- from the United States Congress to actually have these, all these recommendations come alive and be fully implemented.

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: No. The Commission is actually one of about 60 advisory commissions at the Department of Agriculture that has various levels of activity and inactivity, and there's only a limited amount of budgets for all 60 of those, and so we have to get our share, you know, kind of even -- not evenly divided, but it's divided. And, uh, but that's why the new fiscal year starts in October, the new budget year, so that's why we're going to be able to meet in October. So, no, it doesn't have it's own separate line item.

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: Well, there is a section of the report that deals with budget recommendations, areas that the Commission felt needed to be increased, like the sustainable agriculture and research education program. Right now it's only like receiving 8 million dollars. They really would like to see that grow up to about a 40 million dollar level, because actually that is one of the programs that the US Department of Agriculture that really uses producers in conducting research, and conducting educational programs, and relies on networking and community based activities. And the Commission, a lot of the Commission members recognized it as the program that could possibly be modeled in more areas because of it's activities on the sustainable agriculture research and education program. And, going from 8 million to 40 million in 3 years is a big effort. And, sadly enough, it may not come to fruition, but at least if we could get more increases in that area in the next 10 years it would be a great improvement. So, there are recommendations that people could act upon as they best see fit. Yes, ma'am?

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

JENNIFER: We could do an Oprah Winfrey show or something like that, too. I mean can't we move around, is that alright? Not that I'm anything like Oprah. If somebody would like to use the microphone, because yes, you made some very important comments. Do you want to do an abbreviated version?

PARTICIPANT: Repetition of it. Can you hear me? No? Can you hear me now? Okay. My name is Gibbons, Ann Gibbons, and I come from Ireland, and I am the owner of a farm. And I run that farm with two members of my family, one daughter and one son. And they both are some employees. My farm would be in comparison to the run of the mill in Ireland would be considered large. But that was made large by the efforts of our family over the years in agriculture and adding on to it all the time. Now, what I started originally to say way I'm really interested to hear that the US is addressing the problem, or situation of small farms, because we understand that we, in Ireland, are heading where the US now are, which is the elimination of the small holding. And -- we started, yes, we started by putting together what we called a cooperative. Now this cooperative was started locally in villages and in towns or in outside towns, villages, and people contributed whatever they could afford at the time and they bought what we call shares. And they would be original shareholders. Now their original share holding is now quite valuable but the reason that the cooperative started, starting out and what, we merchants in our towns who bought the produce, say beef, say cereals, you name it. Now they would sell in the spring and the autumn. The seeds or fertilizers or whatever else you needed. And when your harvest time came along, you would buy back, but they decided to save price and they decided the purchase price. And naturally, this was to the advantage of the merchant and not to the producer. So the need and welfare, and a person, actually an English man, Sir Horace Punkus, originally is was his brain child. He had studied agriculture in one country, but he came back and he started and, yes, an Englishman in Ireland. And then the idea was to, as I said, to push whatever you could afford, buy shares and then trade. And it traded very well successfully. And in Ireland at that time very difficult to get people to what they call cooperate. Because you always had maybe disagreements or whatever. So it was a big thing to get them all to cooperate to get ........(tape ended)

... it became larger and for dairy as well as cereals and for livestock. Eventually they became very very often to compete and what with larger merchants even, but they, the competition, the coops, you see have coops all over the country and they competed with one another ............ and if you didn't it in one, you to another. And they wanted to trade, so they were ready to pick a price. So there was competition. Now because of the European, first of all economic community which changed everything we had for what they call the common agriculture policy which meant that most, old timers and for project stuff quarters. And strictly wrong in your production. So, that changed to the face of the coops really, because we're -- the cooperative then went on to become a much larger entity. In other words inaugimation started between the smaller ones into a large one. And the aim was to get eventually in Ireland 6, we call them Big 6, in other words 6 in the whole country against hundreds. So inaugimation took place with the smaller ones over years, maybe over the last 20 years. It's happening and coming down the road, until now, we have I think it's just coming up to 6, and major ones, yes. But these 6, some of them are now, have now become pocs, because they are shareholders if they would agree to this, and the shareholders, of course, were told that with as we stand at the moment you will not be able to compete in the world market under what we call WTO and that's post gap, which is the general agreement on tariffs and trade. And you will not be able to trade unless you're at largeness. And that is true. Unless you are large enough you will not be able to trade in world markets. And where do you go to trade if you haven't a world market? Because we're now, the United States almost of Europe. ............... And we're doing this to all our partners. So, we're not going to send some of them to pocs, these are public companies, and these are, the public companies are as well as the cooperatives. So what has happened? Most of them have held 61% stake, this is by agreement with the original share holders because we didn't want to loose control to the stock market, not the live stock market, but the stock market, because the stock market is the place where we'd be going for, that's our access for more funding because when you're entering a global market, you have to have access to funding which would be -- Now, we're at this, at the moment to trade and my interest was, coming back here in US to addressing small farms and I really find this -- I can't understand it. How you're going to make them sustainable. How sustainable is it going to be?

SPEAKER: Well, definitely the issues of economic concentration were part of the Commissions discussion. I think this woman here had a comment about the fair prices?

PARTICIPANT: What I said earlier was that farmers are the only person that go to the market place and say what will you give me for my product. Everyone else goes to the market place and says this is what I want for my product. And we're in quite a dilemma because we've got to buy machinery that's union made, their paid union wages, and we have no guarantee of the price that we're going to get for our product. And it's really difficult. Did you want to respond to that?

SPEAKER: In fact some we can sign contracts for some of our produce and that is the guaranteed price. We negotiate with the company and sign a contract, say for we have it for malt and barley they have it for sugar beets. Umm that's uhh not enough, that's again on, on, on uhh, on quota. You can only get so much on contract.

CAROL ANN: You had a contract here please?

PARTICIPANT: My name is Jane Gates and I work for the same entity that Jennifer does. I work for the United States Department of Agriculture at the National Agricultural Library and I wanted to be sure that all of you knew about the resource that's called the Sustainable Agriculture Network which is a discussion group that's open to every one. We have about 700 members, and you can subscribe. There is no cost involved. I'm sure Jennifer is familiar with it. Um it's umm it's written about in this particular brochure and I went to get it because I know about the network and I'm a member but I don't moderate it and I don't direct it. It's done through a program, another program within the USDA and the address for the group, to subscribe you need to send a message and in the body of the message simply write "subscribe ....NG". I'll put the address up on the flip chart if you'd like me to. It's uh a little complicated, but this particular person said umm is in Iowa and he's quoted as saying Iowa farmer asked me for information on the production requirements for blue corn. I posted a question on sanat at 10:43 a.m. Within 48 hours I had the names of 7 researchers or extension staff working on blue corn, five organizations that handle or process the corn and three producers who have first hand knowledge of blue corn production. I use sanat and it works. It really is an amazing organization and as I said there is no charge to be involved and you can post questions and read other peoples comments. It can get pretty lively and you can always hit delete if you're .......

JENNIFER: That sounds like a good way to communicate with one another. Yes ma'am?

PARTICIPANT: Jane was just plugging sanat and I just wanted to plug this uhh bibliography that Jane has put together, it must have been a great job. And its called Women in Agriculture and Rural Life, an International Bibliography. If any of you are not familiar, it's down on the table. I saw a big stack, she's got a wonderful display down there. I can't believe she didn't promo this herself and I'm glad that I could just pull it up. Well you could have at least plugged it, don't be so humble. In the exhibit hall it's on the back wall coming to your left. All the way back on the very back wall. And it, and then I know that our regular speaker isn't here and I would like us to be able move back into sort of what the workshop here was which was networks. And I know there's a lot of Australian women here and I really feel like they could offer us or anyone else who could offer us kind of tools for networking.

PARTICIPANT: Sounds great. Any comments? In regards to this lady who was speaking. The one thing that we, and also this woman, were talking about when we go to the market and say "What will you give me for my product?" Most of us have perishable products and when we go to the market we don't want to go home with that product back home. And another thing is that supply and demand has a lot to do with the mechanism of what kind of a price we are going to get for that product. If there is too much of a supply in the market of course you know you are not going to get the cost that you need to produce that product. So that's when your cooperatives can work together and you know, we've talked about having a base system in California. Being a dairy producer, of course the dairies are getting bigger and bigger and we're surpassing Wisconsin. I've was on of the people who was asked to testify at the small farms commission. Yea in California, it was in Sacramento. And my great concern, at that time, were these small dairies were going out of business because we were not getting a cost of production and the return on our management. Things have changed a little bit because El Nino, mother nature did it for us. So there is a shortage of butter right now, and its summer time and a lot of butter is being used to make the ice cream so its the fat I should say. So, mother nature, I think she did a good job. Thank You.

CAROL ANN: Thank You and now going back to this topic of networking among groups, among countries, among issues. Who would like to comment about some of the things that they've done?

PARTICIPANT: Since Leanne basically put me on the spot and I decided I better say something. American Agri-Women has been in existence since 1974 and our organization is a coalition of 54 organizations and we also have a booth down in the exhibit hall. We're the people with the green background and big American Agri-Women in the back so you will be able to find us. And umm any of the materials that are on ther front of the booth you are welcome to, as long as they last. And we brought lots and lots of newsletters so you could get that information and use it. Also. Just a slight plug. We also have a cookbook there for $10. It was written by our members and I don't know a woman who doesn't just like to have a new cookbook on their shelf. And we decided that because we like to read cookbooks, we put a lot of ag facts and those kind of things, you know, on the little parts of the page that there's extra room, so that it wouldn't, so you would enjoy the cookbook without it being that you had to cook. But to get back to the network, I think it is so so important for us to learn from each other, and that's what, to me the great joy of American Agri Women is. I never even thought about the fact that people have to grow mint to put flavoring in my toothpaste. And I learned that from a member of American Agri Women, you know, at a meeting. And part of the networking is just what we're doing here. And I think that what the Internet has done immense things for a lot of us, and I have a feeling that's going to not only to continue to grow, but it's going to take up some time in all of our lives everyday because it really helps us to find each other and to be able to discuss those things that we need to be talking about and supporting each other. I think that it is even maybe more important, not so much the knowledge, but just the, as knowledge or as learning but it's the knowledge of knowing there's another woman out there with some of the same problems you have, and maybe she's come across one or two different ways of looking at that situation. And I think that American Agri Women realize that, and when we didn't have a clue about how you did a web site. I mean somebody came to a meeting one day and said, somebody said we need search engines. And we're all thinking, you know, picturing the Little Engine that Could. You know, we hadn't a clue what we were talking about, absolutely not. And we were determined we were going to do it anyway. And we finally got on about a year ago and we can't believe how we existed without it. And now you can make your own web site for nothing. My home church is having a 50th celebration -- 50th year celebration of having youth choirs in the church. And the other night I did a web page to hunt for the people who are around this country, who, when they were kids belonged to the church choir. So we're real curious to see if it does any good. But, I mean it's gonna, you know, it was just, I mean I could do it in an hour. So our web site, American Agri Women's web site is American Agri Women dot com, no hyphen, you know we normally write our, no spaces and no hyphens. American Agri Women, it's A-G-R-I, women plural. One word. All one word. Write it on the board. Okay. When I get done I'll write it on the board. No, this is a web site, its dot com.

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

CAROL ANN: Yes, http://www., you know, but that part is the same. That's the same on all of them.

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

CAROL ANN: Dot com. I will write it down. And you also can e-mail us at AOL dot com. But I will write that down, too. But I agree with her, that working is the secret of this whole thing. The stuff that we're all here for. Absolutely. And I think that if there's some way that we can continue to communicate and help you find people that are in a certain part of agriculture, we want to do that. We have a young, a woman who lives in Wisconsin who used to live in an urban area. And she thinks she's in no-man's land now because she's in a town of 2,000, so she has time that she never had before in her life. Her family is grown. And she is the one who receives all our messages and passes them out to the right officer or whatever. And she is having a ball. It's, and, we could not have found anybody who is better for that because it's really doing her a service as well, because she really feels like completely transplanted where she is now.

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

CAROL ANN: She forwards them out.

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

CAROL ANN: It's wonderful. It's wonderful. I mean, and every once in awhile she'll send me, and she says I don't know who should have had this, so you get it. She'll have these funny little messages that she'll add on to the forward. And, sometimes there -- we have had several college students who are doing research. Wanting to connect with real farm women.

PARTICIPANT: Inaudible.

CAROL ANN: Which is really interesting. It's fun to see what they're what they're studying. There are some fabulous dairy things on the Internet that I found within the last couple of weeks. Being June is dairy month in the United States. We celebrate all of the dairy industry right now, so there's lots of fun things. Somebody else?

MEDIATOR: Thank you very much, Carol Ann. And she's going to write down her web page site and her e-mail address. I'd just like to tell you how we started our network in Wisconsin. We had originally been a part of, just an organization called the Wisconsin, Western Wisconsin Sustainable Farming Network. And it was guys and gals, mostly guys. And I was on the steering committee of that group, and tremendous guys, they were just, you know, very supportive, etcetera, but I just felt that it would be kind of fun to do a meeting with just women, because, you know, when you had these meetings you didn't have anybody to compete for the bathroom with, you know, and what fun is that? So they gave me permission to take some of the money and set up a Saturday conference just for women, and we had 25 women that came in October, I think it was of, we can never remember the year ‘92 of ‘93. But we discovered that there was such an energy and feeling of mutual support in like how could we have lived without this that we decided that we needed to meet again. And that's kind of how we were born. We have survived up to this point on volunteer time, we did get a -- was a sustainable ed -- I'm look at Faye because she's our treasurer and been in the network since the beginning. We did get a grant from the sustainable ed program in Wisconsin to -- not for people, but to help put conferences, for mailing expenses, newsletters, those kinds of hard costs. And all the rest of it was supplied by volunteers. It started mainly in west central Wisconsin because that's where we -- where Faye was I was, but the women who came to every event we had came from all over Wisconsin and boarder states, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa. The first couple years we had -- well, then the next thing we did was had a weekend conference where -- and the fellowship and networking that can happen when you're not rushed to get home or rushed to cook dinner, rushed to do chores was tremendous. But the southern women started to complain about having to drive so far, so we've now split it -- we share every other year. This year is the northern group again. Next year will be the southern group. And they'll put a conference, the weekend conference on in their area. And that usually takes place in the fall. In the spring, as we get more women, find more women, and can localize them more, then we encourage them to put, either to do their own regional day in the spring time. And then during the summer time to have field days on their farm or work days, which has been a tremendous concept. You've got projects on your farm that either you can teach someone else how to do or you yourself need help in being taught how to do something. Put out the call, and we will come. Some of the things we've done are help women fence. We were going to side a pig pen. Built a calf hutch. We've done a lot of our weekend workshops and we've done a lot of hard skill and soft skills teaching. You know, we've had sessions on electricity, on motor maintenance, I didn't go those, I didn't want to know those things. But we offered them. We tried to focus on marketing and developing skills that way, business planning and it's a tremendous thing when -- and we always started with the premise that we have the expertise within this group to do all these things. We just -- you have to volunteer your time and share what you have and we did a directory a couple of years ago. And one of the questions that we asked was what are the areas that you would like to mentor in. What are the things you're doing that you could mentor someone. And the other seven question was what are the areas that you would like a mentor in. And we got a tremendous response of people saying here are the things that I can do and would like to share with someone else. Much less comments on okay, this is what I would like to find out. And I was talking with someone today about that, and we were trying to figure out why, it's probably because women are givers and not takers, and they're going to give, give, give. But that's kind of been our experience and it just once you feel that emotional support and energy from a group like that, you're not going to give it up and you seek ways to make it --

PARTICIPANT: Thank you very much. I was happy to be in Wisconsin just this past Friday, in Toma, Wisconsin, for a meeting that the Catholic Rural Life Conference is holding about the National Commission on Small Farms reports, and it's beautiful country out there. Are there other ideas on how women's groups have been networking?

PARTICIPANT: I'll talk about what I know in south Australia more so than on the eastern seaboard. In south Australia we have, I think probably every other country does, CWA. And that's one of the traditional Country Women's Association. Do they have that? They don't have that in America? All right. Okay. I think world-wide would be Associated Country Women of the World, yeah. So we have that -- Women's Institute -- it could be, yeah. We have that in south Australia, the south Australia Country Women's Association which is very much traditional women's network. The other traditional women's network we've got is 80 years old, and that's the Women's Agriculture Bureau, now known as the Women in Agriculture and Business. But what we found in south Australia, and I think it's probably happening in other parts of Australia as well, is that the younger women on farms found out that they could'nt, they weren't in the position to join a really formal structured organization. And because life is so much different for them now to what it was 17 years ago, 50 years ago, even 20 years ago, and they're having to get a farming come to make their farm viable or maybe family units viable. So they're really hitting for a less structured, they need a less structured organization, non-organization, which is really seen the formation of the networks throughout Australia. In south Australia, because of political -- just the way things are going, really a trend, we lost the use of the W for women or and families are something that you don't talk about. It has connotations of radical and various other things. So, what in south Australia was developed was the FA Rural Network, and that's basically a sister organization to the other rural women's networks. But it's non-gender specific and we do have -- any group can actually affiliate or join it. And that actually ties together all the rural organizations in south Australia. And what we're finding and with that rural network they produce a magazine and it's all done voluntary and it's representatives from all the organizations around south, rural organizations, in south Australia that join up and then they link and they talk and they work on projects together, and they do all sorts of things like that. That's the real, the theory behind it was that instead of the government or a decision maker getting a response, the same response from 15 different groups, that we're getting a response for -- they're being able to put more time and energy into putting there thoughts down, and it would be representative of the number of groups. And the other thing that we're finding is that there's a whole lot of splinter groups popping up within various geographical areas. So we have women in horticulture, we have women in business, we have various others, because these women don't want to be involved in the traditional organizations, they want to work differently. And so, what they do is they have things like a really large meeting 2 or 3 times a year where all you do is you pay $20 and have dinner and have very agricultural oriented speakers and very dynamic people that go back to their very busy lives, and don't think about it. They're at a time in there life where they need to take information and anything they give, they're actually giving to their family, so they're on ................. on the school committee and all that sort of thing. So, and they can't really give to rural women's organizations so they're opting for this other new way of, type network. And what we've started to talk about now in south Australia is having some sort of an umbrella where we can link through any means we can all these splinter organizations. But maybe through a type of re-link situation it may be through a fax situation. And we may be able to try and draw them together once a year, so when they have 30 people come from all sorts of different organizations, and we will just talk about anything and everything to do with rural organizations. So that's the direction we're heading. You might want to add more, Mary, about the other nets on the other side of the coast.

MARY: Yet another Australian on -- I live in the northern territory and they brought in the center of the northern territory in Australia which is really a very isolated area. The town is about three and half thousand people. I work with Farmer Industry and Fisheries and my area covers 240,000 square kilometers, but I only did with 30 out pastoral laces within that area. So, that gives you some idea of how many people are in the area that we deal with. There's a real, it's an increasing -- it's becoming more and more obvious in the territory that the rural women there really want to link together. And it is really difficult to do it. We don't -- out of the 30 out pastoral laces, only 4 have, at the moment, have access to e-mail. And the way the system goes at the moment, the telecommunications system where I live, never acts the same at Internet until its upgraded. So we have to go about things a little bit differently. We don't actually have a network. But there are several women's groups within the territory, we're not actually necessarily focused on rural women, but because of isolated areas there are probably focused on isolated women more so than anything else. One of them is the women's advisory council which is actually a group of women appointed by our Chief Minister, the head of our state, whatever you'd call that. And they in fact have a sub group which is a sort of a rural committee looking at issues for women in remote areas. They have actually been doing a little bit of work just lately we've, some women who have been on the council they, the women who are on the council are only ever on there for a 2 year period. And they have a great turn around. And it's a really good way to get women starting to talk together and realize what they need to be doing. As a result of that, one of the women who is within my region, asked the women's advisory council to put some stuff together to do with leadership training and getting information out to women in isolated areas. Instead of women having to travel 600 kilometers into town or to ask there husbands if they happen to be flying into town that day to pick something up, could they please drop them in. They actually took the meeting out to one of the stations or ranches, whatever you'd like to call it, and had a gathering out there last year in September and 60 women attended from that area, from 30 pastoral stations, I don't know where they came from. And it was devised by this woman who was on the station. She brought them together, worked with the women's advisory council, also, our department, you know, training program called Property Management Planning, where they started to do some stuff on, give them a little bit of advice on succession planning and a bit of workshop session. It was successful in terms of the women getting together in that area. In the area, it's actually a lot of company owned farms or stations, so the turn around in staff is really quick, people might only be there for 3 or 4 years. Some will be there, the woman who organized it has been there for 20 years, but she's an exception and people don't often stay that long. So, you keep getting new young people in who don't know where to go to for services as far as health services in those remote areas, what's available, what's on the educational, those sorts of things. That was just an excellent forum for people to get together there. Some of the comments that came back from there -- there was one lady who traveled over and she said until I went there I didn't even realize that every 6 weeks from the hospital in town there's actually a health service that goes out. She said, I didn't even know they came out to the stations. She said I'm going to go in and ring them right now, get them booked in for the next trip to come to St. May. She said, because I have to do it all other wise. So, actually had the health service come out. Just simple things like that got them going and as a result of the success of that, they're now having another one in next September. They're also going to have one in the next town up from Tenacraig, which is only a mere 700 kilometers away. And they're going to organize a similar set up there in Catherine because it's a little bit closer for, Catherine's a slightly closer sort of area, so people can travel into there. And they're also holding one at another remote station within the area. So they've had 60 women at one, in the one remote area. I don't know, that probably get her another 120 from ..... It was just a really innovative way to get people together and admit there needs on station where they didn't have to travel. It was face to face, which is so important for people in isolated areas. E-mails wonderful, but until you actually get to meet people, it doesn't, I mean, you can talk all your life on e-mail, but until you actually see people face to face it doesn't matter, I don't think. But that was just one way that -- and it's not perfect yet, but those things are happening. And what I'd just add that was really with very little funding. Like women's advisory council had some funding, but a lot of the other stuff is given, voluntary time, people travel there, paid there own way and the station provided refreshments and stuff like that.

MEDIATOR: Thank you very much.

PARTICIPANT: We own a National label. We've got the Rural Women's Unit and really, well particularly in south Australia, we had a really strong women sector going back 10 years ago, but as I've said before the W word dropped out of the common usage and it was no longer a preferred way of dealing with it. Really almost everything in south Australia just went into slow down mode. I mean about 3 years ago the Rural Women's Unit, which is at the national level, started out and they, it's like having a monkey on your shoulder with them. And they, they're really terrific for us because they could come along from extension to your State Department and say "Well what are you doing for women?". And uhh... Yea, and so they go to directors, Helen Borders is really a key person in that. And uh they would have to answer you know like ......... whatever and say yea.. And slowly we were able to build up and because we'd actually got for the first time ever a national coordination we are able to talk to the other states and really start to work on resources that other people were doing and build up and slowly, gradually build up. And now the network, South Australian Network, runs on a budget of seven thousand dollars a year. That's what it, of course its not a lot of money, that covers the cost of the output of that magazine and then the prominent private industries gives a bit of time for myself to edit it and another person, Meg Partridge, to pull the people to gether and organize the meetings as a coordination and a hub base. To get here, what happened and what often happens in South Australia because of our political system we can have different parties political parties in each state and once someone decides they are going to do something when the other party, the other states, think oh my goodness, I'd better do it too. And that's really exactly what happened to get the number of women that were here. Victoria just out of the blue said a hundred thousand dollars, were going to make sure we are going to get twenty women here, and all the other states said, "hell" and it was really like in the last month that our state went into panic mode and I guess all the other states did too. And just sort of out of the woodwork and then industry falls into place as well. Once the government says we'll put in 10,000 they'll go to industry and say "We're going to put this in, how about you coughing up some as well?". And tha t's exactly what happened in South Australia. Yeah, that's right. Because at some point they have to get together nationally and talk to each other and if one of them says, ..... yeah I don't want to go on its getting dangerous. See what can competition do for everybody. So, that's why we need competitive prices too. Yes, sure. Just to add to add to that really and to be really fair to the governments back home, they really have realized that diversity is the key to success in agriculture and primary production. And women are the major diversity factor. And really that's what it all about. And that's really they decided to get behind women's involvement, and recognition of women in primary production. The equity stuff is not on any more its diversity.

PARTICIPANT: Uh.. Just what was said then is exactly true. With Queensland, we lobbied the government and were successful in getting some funding from our Department of Farm Industries. Six people, it got fairly heavy in there for a while. But, we really tried to ensure that they were grass roots producers. We had a bit of a fear in there tucked away. We were successful the .... were advertised and all the women who are here from Queensland are all industry people are grassroots people. The most wonderful thing happened to our network and to the CWA network. The Premier recognized the worth of Rural Women and actually funded me to come to the conference Totally. I'm funded totally by the state government, Queensland and so is the lady from CWA, Norma Lovelace. Also on top of that, one of the things that governments have recognized that the great communicators in your communities are women. We really handle all the communication. So they want the message to go out to their constituents, the best way they can do it is through Rural Women.

JENNIFER: Good, Very Good. Are there any comments. I just had a question in regards , a quick one, about networking with our as someone said over the weekend, our urban cousins. How often do your organizations network with educating folks in the urban areas about agriculture, about small farms, about the loss of farm land, maybe some other issues? I was just curious issues about that. I just thinks that is an area that we continue as agricultural women and rural women that we do need the strength of our own organizations but to also take that step and meet with urban people and to explain what agriculture is and what our needs are and how it all impacts their food supply. So. Yes Ma'am.

PARTICIPANT: Just quickly, we're involved in an adopt a farm program. And that just simply means that we host classes of school children that come to our property and we just tell them what we do through the year and they join in the farm activities and we do animal type things and conservation type things and they just have a most wonderful time. Bridging the urban-rural gap.