Tape #244 - Women and Watershed Management

 

Beverly Nelson from Ontario again and I'm part of the water quality working group in Ontario and we've been looking at all kinds of different water issues over the last four years now and doing a good study on movement of nitrogen and nitrates in water, looking at pollution, we've got several projects on the go.  We're into looking at water drinking permits now because we have no control at all. And anybody that has a permit to take water can take an quantity that they want at no problem, no cost involved except your electricity and irrigation system, if you happen to have it.  We have very little irrigation in our area, just some of the potatoes about hundred miles away. 

 

Renee Gansky and I'm from the Islands of Hawaii, my home is Maui, and I work with NRCS USDA and our main concern with our program, of course our watersheds and we focus on the water quality, right now we're having allot of problems with algae bloom in the Pacific Ocean and so we're looking at allot of practices to improve that situation.

 

Caroline Finny, I am a graduate student pursuing a degree in International, Rural and Community Development at Utah State University, I am specifically interested in gender and natural resource management, some of the research that I've been doing is on a forestry and watershed management project in Nepal, looking at women's involvement, how issues in ethnicity, socioeconomic status impact their ability to be involved in forest management activities and that's why I'm here.

 

When I lived in Colorado, I grew up on a ranch in the arid West and in Colorado it's divided by the Rocky Mountains, and on my side the water flows down but it goes out to California, and there's a big battle always about who gets the water, who gets to keep the water, is the water going to be diverted, and it's an area in the arid West, water is life.  It's all about snow pack, it not about rainfall, so I'm just here to hear about what other organizations and women are thinking about.

 

Rafina Paul from St. Lucia in the Caribbean the chief agriculture planning office in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Forestry and Environment, and I am here, actually I went to the production marketing session and I think it was a over patronizing, and watershed was my second choice.  And watershed is an important area for us in St. Lucia because we're a small country, you can say that of course,  in the sense we're a piece of rock in the sea.  So most of what we do impacts on the environment and the watershed area.  And so I came to hear what the experiences are and I can probably share with you what our experiences have been as far as watershed management.

 

Jane Alexander, and I'm interested in planting trees.  The Pennsylvania Federation Women's Clubs had their project, the governors project was planting trees because of the problems in the both the Allegheny River and Susquehanna River watershed where they've cut the trees.  But on a broader scope I've worked with Ethiopia and other countries trying to encourage them to plant trees.  In Spain to plant trees because of the problems of Valencia.  So no matter where you go, it's important watershed management to plant trees and wind breaks and so on to reduce erosion and loss of top soil.

 

Ashipa Lamagari and I'm a lecturer in Soil Science at the University Queensland in Australia, and so I am interested in women as well as managing water, because it's related to soil management and so on.  And that's why I'm here.

 

I'm Barbara Wallace from Michigan and I'm with the NRCS Social Sciences Institute which is a division of USDA

 

I'm Mary Salse and I was only asked to do this yesterday so with the lunch and what have you, I haven't been able to put very much on paper, plus I couldn't bring any literature because I didn't know I was doing it.  But I've been involved in water management at home since the early 80s so I can give you a little bit of history as far as what's happened in our area, its been one of the pilot areas of Australia, so I'll go back to the early 80s and than tell you about where we're at today.  You happy with that.  With the development in Australia earlier in this century, there was allot of clearing done in the third r flats area, especially around my area which is a lake area.  We have about 8 rivers going into this lake system, I don't know whether you've heard of the worse floods in the area, but that's just happened since I've lived home in that area.

 

I belong to the Evan River Management Board in the early 80s.  It was a board that was an all men board, I felt that water was going to be an issue in many years to come, and I also thought we as farmers or environmentalists, we need to get on these boards ourselves, so I was appointed to this board in the early 80s.  There was only a single board for the Evan River, the government thought rather than have a separate board for every river, we'd try to combine some rivers.  So combined ourselves with the McAllister River.  So it became the Evan-McAllister River Board. Than the government started taking money resources out of environmental projects.  So we had to start finding money ourselves.  So we had to start finding money ourselves. So we had to write the people on the river.  For every dollar we received the government put in two.  The government than didn't want to put that one dollar in so we had to whole hall of catchment, that's towns people and everyone concerned, that's on the Evan-McAllister.   So we were a private project, so I thought this works great, we now can take it on to the other rivers.  In the meantime, we had to take on two other rivers, and we had to write bigger towns, larger populations, we had allot of opposition, from the town people, but the government made it law that we had to collect this right.  Because we've now started collecting this right, its not just farmers on this board, it is the town people, we are now out numbered by the town people.  But we had to listen to everyone' views because we have been righted.  The concern that I have is that less and less women are getting on these boards, and we're trying with lobbying government with Victoria, what's happening now is we have a catchment management strategy.  We're not just rivers and more we call it hall of catchment management.  So we have one layers right up the top, which is appointed by government, and they are paid.  Than we have different layers underneath, which are just the river management.  But just from where I come from when we were doing on a smaller scale, there was on 10 percent going into administration. Today I think there is about 45 percent of that money going into administration, so that's a concern we as farmers have.  Also, under this catchment management we now have water quality.  We have a committee of water quality.  Water quality we are working with the schools, the students are measuring the water, I think every Monday they go and measure the water and test the quality.  We have land care groups that work along the river banks and in the valleys trying to look at the erosion.  We've got a great program of planting trees, you've probably heard of Land Care.  Trying to fence off all the rivers, and trying to have 20 yards of trees along every river bank.  We also dammed some of these rivers, and that water goes into the big capitol cities, and with our worse drought we just had, we had this mighty Thompson Dam that had enough water to supply Melvin for two years and we could not get one drop of water out of that dam to send it back to the farmers or flush the lake system where the algae was blooming.  So we have all those problems.  I think some of you mentioned you were dairy farmers.  The EPA in our areas monitors the effluent that goes into our river system.  Their monitor creeks and rivers at different stages and if they can track it back to whose farm its coming from, and if you haven't got a recycling pond system within your farm system they can force you to put one in within three months.  And that can cost you up to $50,000.

We also have a problem of solidity.  The local community is set up to look after that themselves, they make their own recommendations to government and than try and find funding.  And we are getting less and less funding.  And our concerns at the moment that as farmers and land owners find that we are paying for everything.  We think it should be spread around the whole community.  A big concern this year was environmental flows.  Where we are we actually pump off of the Evan River.  We know have a roster, a pumping stand, that we have to allow ten megaliters has got to go through the rivers.  But we're starting to accept that.  It's been hard but we're getting there.  The cost of irrigation water is going up. I couldn't get over your cheap water in California.  We pay about $40 a megaliter at home. I think that's about 100 times of what some of you are charged here in California.  We recycle that water, it's becoming such a high cost, that we catch that run-off, something that we didn't see in California, did we?, we catch that run-off and reuse it again.  Also we're starting to use pivot irrigation, its a high cost to set up but water is getting dearer and looking at the cost, that can cost to set up probably $100,000.  Unfortunately in Australia, to use a pay system, I notice here in California, you only have to pay for the cost of getting your water to the property.  We also have a cost, even though a dam was built 50 years ago, the government puts a cost on what that would cost to be rebuild today, and we have to pay on those costs. 

 

The major concern down in my area is with algae blooms in the river strings.  We got this catchment management plan now where we are revegetating hopefully to revegetate along either side of dams and plant the understory as well.  Because quite often, when you plant the gum trees along the sides of the river, you don't get very much understory, so you've got to plant allot of understory as well to try and filter the nutrients from runoff the farms, the fertilizers and things because its those that causing the algae blooms in the rivers.  And this year being such a dry year, we've had more algae blooms than we've ever had before so it's becoming more and more a problem.  So we're trying to speed that up allot more quickly so we've formed land care groups, got whole communities planting trees and fencing off rivers, and it just brings back all the nighter vegetation, plus the fish as well back into the streams, as long as they have water to swim in. And as Mary said, one of the major problems in the past has been the effluent from dairy farms.  Because my area its all dairy.  Every bit of water on your land is not allowed to leave your land. It must stay with you.  And every bit of run-off is going to stay with you within your own boundaries.  On your own property.

 

West Australia started land care probably about 1975, and its certainly very well developed.  I haven't spent allot of time, ever since the beginning I have been part of a land care group.  But the men have tended to do the jobs further up, and I've been content to let them.  But we're doing large tree planting, in the time since I left home two weeks ago, my husband has planted over 6,000 trees.  And he has done them all by hand because he likes to, all we do is rip the land, than we plant the trees in the rip.  But it's very easy to just drop a tree and push your foot on it and its firmly in.  So, he can do a 1,000 a day quite easily.  We're trying retain the water on our land.  Our land is ennulating and not mountainous, we do not have a river system as such, but we live in a thirty inch rainfall and it's very important for us to keep that water where it falls.  So all our cultivation is done on the contour.  And that gives us the equivalent to approximately an extra inch of rainfall each year.  So we're actually using a great deal more as well as planting these trees.  And we do have a salt problem and that is being overcome gradually.

 

Well, I would hope that the women would take leadership and get on these boards and get these trees planted, and to have the male farmers be concerned about conservation.  Tomorrow, on my farm, I won't be there, but we just spent six months doing watershed management on my farm.  Doing the water ways, tiling them, along the stream that traverses the farm, we had high school students come in and plant a beltway of trees along either side of the stream.  What is interesting to me, and this is

part of the Chesapeake Bay authority work, but what's interesting is that the conservation district, that serves the south central part of Pennsylvania, which is just north of here, came to me, and they said, would you let your farm be used as a demonstration farm because we can't get any farmers around here to do it.  It has to be done and it has to be done all around in the Chesapeake Bay area because we have such a terrible erosion problem, and more and more and bigger and better floods every year.  As we're getting run-off and speed of run-off.  But these farmers don't want to spend the money, oh well, let their fields erode, they don't want to spend the money, they don't want to loose the acreage that their going to loose as those sustained waterways and grassways, and so tomorrow they're going to having people come in buses and their going to look to see what will happen.  And what I think is disgusting about the whole thing is, that the men around who own the hundred of acres around me are laughing about the dumb women farmer who is allowing her land to be tiled, and the grassways, and why in the world would I allow my stream to be fenced and the trees planted.  And the smart remarks are really funny.  In fact, they run some articles in the newspapers about the stupidity of this woman allowing this to be done to her farm.  And yet if we don't do it, the increased pollution, but more importantly the tremendous problem of run-off, and we find that in you say, Nepal, and in places like that, its heartbreaking when you go and you look at the very deep canyons almost in their farmland where they've had erosion, and its all because there isn't a tree in sight, and if lightening hits one or two trees, the villagers are there and chop it up in nothing flat, and nobody replaces the tree. And I propose like in Ethiopia, why don't they use along their roads.  What they did was they took forty feet back from the roads, and they planted rows of trees, and it was enough of a windbreak, it didn't effect their fields, but it provided enough of a windbreak to modify the wind direction.  There was a very interesting project in India, I know the gentleman who did it, he happened to own 20 hectare of land and it was right near a lake, and he decided to plant eucalyptus trees.  And it worked.  And I've used this as an illustration in similar localities.  He planted the eucalyptus.  The local villagers and he had to have it guarded so that they wouldn't cut the trees, and they said the reason that they were trying to stop him was because if the trees grew that the snakes would come and that there would be all kinds of problems with the animals coming into the area.  And now, it's a beautiful grove of trees, but the interesting thing is it has raised the water level, it's helped the lake, there haven't been any snakes, and the villagers picnic among the trees.  And they now protect the trees.  But when he tries to get other people to do it, oh well they don't want that to happen.  And so, he's now trying to get them to do line planting.

 

Question:  Seems to me a couple of you have mentioned getting women more involved on the water boards.  How is that taking place and what do you recommend for getting more women involved? 

 

Answer:  Probably the best way is to get a group women together and pick a candidate, and lobby for that woman to get appointed.  That's how we've gotten women on boards in Pennsylvania and other states, that's what we've done, and it also helps to get a couple men to support her too.  And that's true for not only in your water boards but in conservation committee.  And also if you can get them elected to your various agriculture extension support groups.  Pick one women and support her.

 

Question:  How'd you loose your trees along the stream bank?

 

Answer:  In my area, the rivers are even straightened, all the trees were taken out when they cleared it, the rivers were straightened, the bends have now been put back, they straightened the river, but this was still going on 40s and early 50s.  And my neighbor has two fence posts on top of one another because the sand over the 50 years have done this.  But with all the floods we have now, we don't have a sand problem.  So we've overcome by putting the bends back and putting the trees there, we've overcome it.

 

Question:  I'd like to get some ideas about what you could do back in your community to get women involved in this?

 

Answer:  In my area all you have to do is ask if you want to be on a board.  You just have to go and say I want to be there.  That's why I'm on water group that I'm on.

 

In Ontario there's so many jobs open and they have so many committees and so many people are busy, if you show an interest they'll welcome you with open arms.

 

Question:  One question that I have to ask though, is we've been trying to set standards for fresh water streams, for regenerating fish habitats, and their looking at the parts per million of nitrogen or the nitrate in the water, and what levels do you people ask for, and their trying the legislate a point 1 part per million and the natural number of parts per million of nitrate in water from falling trees, just from the leaves falling off once a year is 4.  And I just wondered what the levels are? And this is what their aiming for, what does that mean in the context of what your speaking about?

 

Answer:  We're just monitoring this in our area, we've got 2 to 3 years of material. And from that they'll set a benchmark.  We haven't even gone into the nitrogen and the nitrate.  Not as much as before because their trying to get us to pay this environmental rate, which we're paying and the locals make the decisions.  But the people on the board are government appointees.  Even though we pay the rates, we can not vote to get people on these boards.  Most of them are political appointments.

 

Answer 2:  In answer to your question, I have a book that has that in it that's recently published and if any of you haven't seen the book that was discussed yesterday at the environment section if you didn't happen to be there, it's Sandra Steingrabber's latest book called "Living Downstream."  It has an excellent rendition of the latest chemical, pesticide, and herbicide problems in addition to many other things.  She has the latest ones in there.  $10.

 

 

I'm an American farmer and we hear allot about the research and the regulation that we need here in this country.  Our EPA has just done some very technical decision making on impaired waters in this country.  I've been working on a project with it myself but from the other viewpoint what do we need to countervail some of the degradation if it does exist, my question is what is really reliable?  For documentation, the sampling methods and such, and where do we need to set that criteria at?  I think too many times we exceed the need.  She was asking about nitrates and it's 10 parts per million in US.  And your saying much more stringent in Canada.  My information is the reason for the nitrate concern, the affect that it has on fetuses and on young children.  The development in their system for their brain that's very simple.  And difficulties arise at 45-50 parts per million, but we set our standards at ten.  You see we exceed.

 

You were talking about water boards.  I don't know if you have in whatever local unit of government you have, whether you also have boards that oversee zoning and building, and one of the major problems that we have in the US is that we don't have allot of people on those zoning boards or boards that control construction.  Particularly, in the farming counties or townships next to cities.  And so when they allow construction, like on shopping malls, offices complexes or anything where you have large surfaces or hard surfaces, they do not require that they put water permanable surfaces.  And all this does is lay down vast areas of asphalt or concrete which increased the run-off. 

And until we got the contractors or the zoning boards act to force them to put the proper bases down in these big areas, we're going to continue to increase our water run-off and the speed of it.  So getting women on those boards who aren't interested in so much about the dollars that are going to be saved by contractors, but be concerned about the damage to the environment, we're still going to have the problem.  And guess what?  The farmers get blamed for it.

 

We've had an extreme on our own farm.  Extreme good luck with absolutely no tillage.  We just plant all our crops 100% no till now.  And it saves energy, it saves time, it saves us approximately $40 an acre, Canadian to plant our crops.  Erosion has gone practically zilch.  There's nothing there.  We don't have to go and pick stones.  We would pick 50 and 60 tons of stones from a field every year.  Because the ice action and frost action would bring them up.  We plant probably two or three days later then everyone else. Our fields look incredibly messy for a long time.  Our neighbors have been laughing at us for the last five or seven years.  Our yields are identical if not better than anybody else and our costs are about $40 an acre lower.  Our soil structure has improved immensely, the number of worms per square foot has increase at an increditible rate.  And they'll pay you cash under the table $500 to come for a night sometimes.  One man offered us $6,000 for the rights to pick for six weeks.  Because we had so many worms on the farm.  And it was because we were going into a second year of certain rotation compound.  And it was really interesting.  And when we have rain now there's so much trash there, the soil is so much more porous that the water goes down, and so we tend to have a better crop than the neighbor that's done allot of tillage.  It's amazing the number that's starting too.  When you look at a field of sow beans that have been planted into combine stubble and the stubble is about this high.  It looks just awful, just simply awful.  But we've been doing and we've been persisting for the last several years.  And our yields are better than most people, with a fraction of the work. We've got lots of dandelions, the fields are quite yellow.  Milkweed is our biggest problem.  And the milkweed all spreads underground, so it has to be usually a preseason round-up, it's the only way we can control it.

 

And West Australia has taken over from Canada I think, in no till. But we call it no-till.    And the structure of the soil is just remarkable, once all those little root systems have been in there. The moisture goes in very very quickly.  And to us, moisture is so important, and the same, we've all sowed crops into our stubble that is standing there.and it looks as though it's just stubble for a long time and than all of the sudden this lovely crop comes out of it.  Really amazing.

 

Yes, I just wanted to share some of the oriental experiences, I'm specifically referring to Philipino women, as many of you may know, Phillipino women are very active in practically all faces of life.  But if you look deeper and you look at real communities that's where you see some gender discrepencies.  When there are meetings, as the lady beside me has said, it is really the men who dominate.  And what we have found as a good strategy is to have separate meetings.  Meet with the men and meet with the women separately.  And get issues from both sides.  And than when issues are {?}out than it is a time to meet together as a group again.  So that is one way to assure that women's voices are heard. 

 

Actually there is a German project in Nepal, covers about 1.2 million people and it's social forestry.  The idea meaning that it's more holistic, it takes into consideration not only forest issues, but literacy, and micro-credit schemes so on and so forth, one of the problems that their having they do this with separate women in men's groups, they call them user groups, but among the women because they have so many different ethnic groups, and you've got the cast system, they find that the women, even when they get together, their sort of separated into two or three different groups of women.  So, you've got one particular ethnic group that feels as though their doing all the work, they actually say they feel the men from the other ethnic group don't allow their women to come out and get involved, they view the other women as being lazy.  Something that I rarely hear women talk about regardless of the subject, the difficulties among women, in making decisions, I don't believe that women always come together, and everybody says, great we're all women and we all agree and  this is great, so let's move ahead.  And everybody's laughing so I'm sure you've all experienced something similar.  But I really feel that it's important to look at that as women, because we're all different in this room, we have all different experiences, needs, strategic interests that we want to pursue.  I just wanted to bring this up, because even with these women's groups, their not always successful at achieving what they want.

 

You reminded me of another example that I just saw in Cambodia that's interesting, it's an interesting phenomena, and that is that UNDP, I don't know if many of you are familiar with United Nations Development Program, but they are very much involved in local planning units trying to help facilitate decentralization of governments, and what their doing is often well received in the sense there are proportions of women that are asked to be involved, but what I've seen happen is because women are very reluctant to become leaders, they'll often be leuitenant, you know they'll be the second in charge, the person that really does all the work, but isn't given the credit for making the decision, what they do is take that position and than when the men migrate to the cities in the winter time, they actually take over that position and they get allot accomplished during that time.  It's very very clever, because the men still feel like their the leader, they get the nominal tag that goes along with it as being the leader in local development planner, but they actually are very much involving women's leadership at the local level.  I think that it really works well especially in the initial stages when your in that transition time. 

 

One problem when you go to some of these meetings, I know that it's twenty-five men and me.  The twenty-five men are paid to go to these meetings, and I am paying my own way.  Now, I happen to live close to the university and the agricultural center, and it's only a ride down the road, so I just stop in on my way grocery shopping.  But you know what I mean, it's a high cost for some women, and we've got a really good workshop coming up on the 2nd and 4th of December run by the center for inland waters for the whole great lakes region.  And it's going to be three hundred and fifty dollars, and I'm going to have to pay it myself, every other person on the group is paid for. And that's a real stubbling block.  Last year they had a beautiful conference, with some tremendous results, and they ended up making a profit of $2,100, they wondered what to do with it, and I said I thought maybe that they could use that to subsidize somebody that isn't paid to attend.  But that really would stop women from going.  Because they've appointed by a farm group, a beaurocrat, a technocrat, you know, somebody that in the field or in the business and I'm going with the farm women's group, the farm women's group doesn't have the money to pay me to go to the meeting, so I have to foot the bill myself, so I become a volunteer.  And that's not fair.  I have full voting rights.  But you know that's expensive, and there's are allot of women that couldn't do that.  And if I happen to have a day off of school and the meetings that day than I go, and it doesn't cost me anything, but anybody else that would go, it would cost them a fair dollar to go.

 

Slide #244, side #2

 

Banana market in the UK.  In 1994 we had a major flood, because with the growing of bananas over the twenty-five to thirty years you'll find that bananas also grow {?} watershed areas.  An interesting part of {?}.  A particular aspect or the lands in our watersheds are privately owned and you'll find that there is difficulty in imposing a strict management regime in watershed when you have private persons running the lands.  And their {?}.  Not in the organic farming way but by using pesticides and {?}, I mean other non-environmentalist ways of doing.  So you'll find that the question of infiltration into the rivers is so.  Deforestation causes the lowering of our stream flows.  And a major decrease in our river flows.  With the rains we had over a continuous period of time over that time, the waters had no where to go but to just run down. So with that happening, you found that people were surprised that the level of the flooding that we had in most of the country, I mean, our banana fields most of them went flat.  It was a major devastation.  After that happened we went into immediate watershed project with World Bank assistance.  There was again a meeting with committee {?} technocrats,  sociologists, economists, you name them they were there.  They developed a elaborate plan if {?} plans to be used to do some watershed management.  Part of that included looking at the question of coming to set up action.  Getting the committees to be part of that process of watershed management. Two pilot areas were set up.  Women were brought in but what I found in terms of the leadership part, while women might be involved, men normally take the lead. And it's not that the women are not interested, it's just that women to a large extent do not mind doing the work, but not necessarily taking the glory.  We might say it's bad, but I think in the final analysis, we have to be careful in terms of whether we consider it action and effect or just being in the fore front. Because what we have to be guarded against is that sometimes we might emerge, but the ability really have a significant impact in terms of {?} might not necessarily be there, because of the kind of women who take the lead they might not really be the ones who can really cause the change we want to happen.  It's happening now, because most times men permit you to lead.  And we have to accept that, because there's an all boys room, which is very invisible but very active, and I'm telling you people, like myself, there's nothing you can feel, but it is there.  So, when you turn around, but listen what's happening, say but listen Raphio, I mean look at this women there, but when you look at the women {?}, they put the women in charge, she's permitted to lead but she doesn't cause any change to happen, because they know that she will not create any ripples in the stream. {?} The numbers are there so when are you going to ask for numbers. But listen we are free women so that looks good.  It's not just a question about women on boards, and women on committees, and taking statistics about which women are where. It doesn't help the cause really.  When you look behind the statistics, my concern the ability to cause change.  And most times, all we have is a women in front that has nothing behind, and I think we need to be concerned about that.  It's not just being on the board, it's being able to create the change.  And having the strength to be an odd number            .  It's getting to a point, where you get exhausted and that you work mainly with men, and you always find yourself shouting, and find but wait, why am I shouting.  They hear you, but they play like they don't hear you.  And hear you, they do the action, but again as I said, they pretend they never heard you. And they turn around and say your very emotional, and I just say what's wrong with that?  But then why they did not credit you I mean, for having the impatence, you see the change happening, but you did not see me as being the one speaking of the change. Some people just look around, and say what are you doing?  I say, Im just there. Why you still there.  No,  because we have to do what we have to do.  Because they figure you must be in the front.  But I know just being there has been quite a tester, and you have to just stay in there and do, because agriculture planning in our context is tremendous.  My capacity to really get the fellows that is to sit down and write the plan collectively is not an easy task and as I told them sometimes, I mean I could sit behind my desk for agriculture incentative. It's not an academic exercise it's a collective exercise.  And what you find, is that my position is one that should already be at the highest scale, but I am not making noise about that, and so they have not necessarily found it reasonable to put it where it's supposed to have the affect it's supposed to have, and I {?} automatically you get that {?} but I don't make noise about it, I just do what I have to do, so you leave it there.  But it's more difficult, when your not in the position when people preceive to be authoritative--to take action.  I mean it's the kind of directive that we like to get.  And of course, of me, like myself, would necessarily, is passive people tend to want to react to you, but unto the message all of that is almost a question of getting you to change your purchasing and it's not easy working with men and trying to create change.  From a playing field which is very, very un{?}and difficult.  Where you can not see the enemy but the enemy is the quote unquote enemy.  Not in any derrogatory sense of the enemy but I think that women have to remember that it's not just being in the forefront or being on the boards, but it's your capacity to sustain yourself from your own personal motivation and to know what change really matters.  Not just your personal gratification as far as are you doing something, but your ability to be there create change for others to benefit from that change. So you have to be careful of what things we do.

 

I think she's raised another issue that's pretty significant and that is this whole notion of creation of back lash.  How very fine line that is that you walk when your involved in this kind of situations, and the kinds of roles that you mentioned.  A few years ago, I worked on some research in the Caribbean and I was very cognison of the fact, that many of the more powerful men, for instance, the number of graduates of the law school of the west indies.  The majority of graduates are women, in the law school, in the law profession, which has profound impacts of who gets the judges positions and things like that in the future.  So men are watching these markers very carefully. They are very threatened by that. Extremely threatened.  If women are allowed to succeed they succeed very well, and move on very quickly, having been held back for so long. And than there's these new problems that are created by being successfu. The Canadians for instance, in Africa, had incredible early success with saving associations, and loan and credit programs, that were totally cut out, because men in the villages felt somehow they were getting left out and they were being replaced with a very fast moving kinda movement of women being very successful business managers.  So, it's interesting what constitutes success.  Some of the best programs are some of the ones that no longer exist because of the back lash.  Has anyone had further experience with the back lash issue.

 

The Island of the Phillipines is funding a number of NGOs and one of them at the Jerry Ross Foundation has found a working formula in dealing with gender issues in mico enterprise development as well as in providing answers to women for entrepreneurial activities.  So what they do, the NGO does, first to conduct a leadership among the potential women borrowers.  Along the course of the training, there is a gender awareness that they put into the course.  And once the component is done, they invite the husbands to participate.  And they have an overnight session with trainers, as well as with their wives.  And together they work out a strategy on how to do their own micro enterprise activity.  So it becomes a husband and a wife undertaking, you wouldn't even recognize that the loan is going to be given in the name of the women, the husband provides full support and understanding of the women's involvement.  So with that approach the chance for success became higher.  The notions of men being threatened by successful women are somehow kept to a minimum.  And it has worked, they have so far trained about 11,000 women.

 

I think that that's a very good strategy. However, I'd throw up a couple questions marks.  And that is "what about the single women who have a great potential to lead?" you know, who get left out of that kind of training, where they can build on those skills.  The other thing is in Papa New Guinea we experimented with something similar to that, because an extension worker area, keeping women out of the extension area, as extension agents, was very common, and one of the things that was introduced was to have the husband and wife team.  You know to be able to go out together, and that really helped bring in more women, but it also left out the single women who had access to education and you know, and maybe been a good trainer at the same time.  So there are pros and cons to that, I understand, I think that that was one way to get at that problem, but I think there are other ways to get at that. 

 

I think something indirectly related to watershed management is the whole question the pressures that international committees putting on the farming committees in terms of the whole question of free trade and liberalized trade and this kind of arrangements are non-competitive now quote unquote farmers might find themselves very constrained in terms of doing sustainable farming and at the same time being able to meet the market requirements. I think that's an issue to we have to look at in terms of what it is doing to our ability to maintain our watersheds.  I mean in the distance.  And I mean that has an impact in terms of what you do with your farm, what crops you grow, how to be competitive, so why it might look to be a distant {?} relationship, that in itself does cause problems, because our bananas was instance, where there was a irregular cash flow from bananas and you went into the crop and you degraded the watershed areas to grow the crop, and than you have a life- long problem facing you in the sense where you've lost some of your inheritance which you to pass onto future generations.  So we have to see how the market to the large extent influences your watershed.

 

Your words just reminded me of a problem that we've encountered with dwelling new municipal wells in the urban area, and their now talking about restricting farm operations within a kilometer or half a kilometer on each side of every well, and that's really going to do it when our city, which if Graff Ontario, with the big university, we get all our water from Artisian wells, every bit of it.  If you were to put that restriction on we wouldn't be able to use our farm, because it would fall within the range of the mile or the kilometer of every well around.  And I'd say within our township we would loose every farm.

 

Well, I have an office in Patchuka, which is north of Mexico City, and one of the major concerns for all the farming areas around Mexico City, particularly north of the city, because that's there best farmland, the state of Hilbogo, and what their doing is what your saying, there tapping, their setting wells out there.  And as your driving along the turnpike that goes from Patchuka to Mexico City, you see this big pipe heading into Mexico City robbing the farmers of the state of Adelgo of their water and its beginning to create problems for them.  And they don't care, your just loosing farms right, the city of Mexico is dropping anyway, because they've pulled the water out of the aqua fire is saying we need the water, and as a result is creating a terrible problem for New Mexico.

 

Where I come from we have an Artisian basin.  And this year, the worst drout we've had on record,  we were all banned from putting down new bores.  And I think that ban stay for the rest of my life there, but some of holes we go down about 400 feet, we get about 60,000 gallons an hour, very similar to what they do in California, but we're metered or we're going to be metered, some of us, and we have to pay $6 a megaleter and yet the government does not contribute.  It's becoming as expensive as the water coming out of the wares. So we have this great Artisian basin, one of the best in Australia, and the government has stopped us from drilling any more holes, and the land prices in many areas have just dropped overnight without any warning.

 

So where do we go from here. In terms of organizing to increase consciousness and that sort of thing. 

The farm city programs where you invite people from the cities out to the farms.  And I think that one of the best mechanisms is to get the people in the cities what your problems are.  Because their not going to read about you in the paper and their not going to care what happens to you but if you can get them out there and show them onsite what your problems are, and explain why you need the water, and what their doing to them, or why you need certain programs to preserve farms, their very receptive, and it's like planting trees.  Very often you can get particular women's groups, but sometimes you can get NGOs, they like the idea, they like the romance of planting trees, and if you can find an area for them to do it.  They'll give you the money, or they'll send work crews out, their not very good because their from the city. But you can get them to support your projects, and we've found if you can get a group together, and it doesn't have to be a long-term group, cause all you want is that one focus and you hold their attention that long, and you make a big PR thing about it, you can get the help, and this is what we've done with allot of groups where we saw a problem.  And it got the town people involved and they respond, once they understand.

A square dance group who from Perth who came up for three years in succession and helped us plant trees but they had a group of friends who'd just dumped in a bus load on the side of the road, and left to do their own thing.  Whereas, when they came to Bindy-Bindy we put on a big pot of soup, a bit of hospitality, but they planted an awful lot of trees, and they worked very hard, so that was one real success story.

 

The friends of the ABC which is the Australian Broadcasting Company in Melvin, all their workers have a weekend, and they usually go down to {Gibson?} somewhere, planting trees, and they certainly talk about when they get back on the radioduring the week about the fun they had.  It think that sorta helps the city/country relationships.  What we do get allot of is the prisoners plant allot of trees.  We get allot of that happening.  And they'll even do the fencing to fence off for the trees too.  It's all work related programs.  Who pays for the trees and where do they come from? 

 

Yes, actually the state governments from their tree nurseries are glad to contribute the seedlings, because their thining out their seedbeds.  And they will give them to you. Another source is some of the paper companies will provide seedlings, and they don't do it because they want to cut the trees, but they just want to get people with the thought that their do-gooders and their providing trees to replace all the ones that they cut.  And than of course, there are government programs that provide seedlings at a very limited amount of money. So the trees are there and you just have to ask around and it's surprising how many of them you can get free.

 

We planted about 30,000 of them about fifteen years ago.  Now when I look my living room window, we have a real barrier of trees between us and the next far and all in around our creek valley.

 

You can drive past our place now and see the kangaroos lying under the trees on the side of the road, and they certainly weren't there before our trees.  But ALCOA a big mining company in Western Australia produces millions of trees a year and gives them away.  Because its good for their image clean, green, etc... and they give huge numbers of trees.  There's another organization called Men of the Trees and the seed is actually collected from the rural areas, taken to the city, and city people volunteer to start growing these trees, and then they go out and plant them on the land where they came from.  I've actually put our name forward, it's never actually happened to us, but I do believe that it does work reasonably well.

 

In our context, we have an agroforestry program which is in its developing stages, and also community forestry program.  What has helped us very quite a bit is the environmental education component, getting people's and {?}doing what has to be done.  And we distribute what you'd call economic forest crops in the sense at looking at mangos or citrus or crops that could probably burn an income while you consume the land.  A difficulty that we've come across is that most persons who probably would want to get into that do not own some of the land that they cultivate.  And you {?} should not {?}secure tenure to go into long-term crops.  So that's an obstacle we have to look at in terms of people's {?} to want to do long-term crops, when you do not have secure titles to the lands that you own.  And also the questions of persons, again {?} to go on more, even if I loose about twenty feet of my river bank, I will benefit in the long run.  But it takes time.  So in the medium- to long-term we are hoping to get more people on board, while we look at our land tenure and getting the schools as well involved.  And we've had a very rigorous, and intensive educational program over the last fifteen to twenty years, I would say, that is now progressing in momentum.  Thank you.

 

In our area the girl scouts and boy scouts to earn their badges will plant trees, and the nurseries

will donate, and get their picture in the paper donating them, so we don't have any problems there.

 

One of our land care groups at home have probeggating some little farms on allot of the owners farms, they have a barbacue and all come out and pot up the trees, one particular one I know they give their trees away for free, cause they have allot of fun growing them.

 

Question:  I just wanted to bring up another issue is there enough water?  Or will there be enough water for the increased production we're all asked to do as farmers, and what can women issues can women raise and what strategies can they put in place? 

 

Answer:  Anyone want to respond to that.  What about quantity.  I would think that is going to be the biggest problem twenty years from now.  I don't know what we can do, I mean I haven't been thinking about that, I talked to one of the women on the brochure and I said, Why haven't you got anything on water, I think World Watch could give you somebody that could give a presentation on water.  I was really disappointed that there was nothing on water.  It's a topic that scares me, I live in Minnesota, the land of ten thousand lakes, and I even think there we may have a problem with water. So think of other places where water is, our lakes are going down, the Ogalala Aqua fir that some of tap and the Jordan Aqua fir are being tapped down in Kansas, so that's lowering our water level, it's scary.

 

I was water resource chairman for American Agriwomen for five years and going into I didn't know anything about water and I did all the research myself.  What I've discovered is in our area their trying to change our water laws, the Department of Justice is just given us a law suit, every farmer on the Wacca River, we also have a lawsuit that Sierra Club is behind, and it's called the Wacca River Working Group, and we also have a lawsuit with the Pyuet Indian Tribe.  Now that's three lawsuits we have to pay for and fight in the middle of trying to farm.  But during my research, I found out that what their trying to do is force us to riverbank, and I thought it was a good idea, because I thought that conserving water, recycling water, people would have drinking water, from Lake Tahoe we have water that is recycled and we use on the fields.  But when all my research was finished, I was really devastated to find out that they were only trying to change our waterlaws, we have a ranch that has a hundred and fifty year old water rights.  And their trying to take those away from us anyway they can.  And I think that the thing that you really need to watch is I went to all your water meetings, I went to the Governor's Advisory Board meetings, and found out that the people in Las Vegas thought that our water was going to be piped down to them,  that's what they were told.  The Colorado River is being re-allocated.  I think you have to attend all these meetings.  You don't want to sound paranoid just sit in the back of the room, educate yourselves and try to monitor it if you can.  That's the only suggestion that I have.

 

Well, It's not only a matter of the volume of water, it's really a basic lack of sufficient water, and it has a second part to it, and that is the intense pollution of many of our waterways, you sight Florida where we have the tremendous problem in the Everglades, where the US Core of Engineers and incident wisdom really screwed up, excuse me fowled up back when they put in all the waterways in Florida, and look what a disaster it is and now their having terrible floods down there. And they can't relieve the pressure on the Everglades, they'll flooding out the Everglades, and of course the sugar growers are getting waxed because of all the pollution that their causing in growing sugar cane.  And this is whats happening in many areas, you have water, and what you have is so polluted you can't use it, so there is enough good water or fresh water and everybody wants water.  No there isn't enough water.

 

This brings to mind a good friend of mine, who just passed away her name was Ruth Hutchins and she lived in my home town of Grand Junction Colorado and she was a rancher.  Ranched next to my family.  And over the years, she became on her own, an expert on water every aspect of water.  And she went on her own, like your doing, to all these water meetings, got herself on boards, was an absolute fly in the ointment for the waterboys, but was an expert in the end.  And unfortunately in some ways as when we have to become experts, but her loss is a great loss for those of us who care about water, and I look around this room, when I go home, back to my hometown, someone has to fill her shoes, but we all have to do more than anybody else, we have know more than the guy sitting next to us, that's just the way it is, we have to speak up with a strong voice, but also we always have to moderate it so that we're taken seriously, all those tricks we have to do, but I think the one thing we have to do is be diligent and no more than they do. 

 

I'd like to take off my USDA hat.  Prior to joining the USDA seven years ago, I was very involved in my community in number of issues, served as a head of a chamber, was involved in the general federation of women's clubs, I don't know if any of you are familiar with them, I was a state president and we had 10,000 members, and I was also on the national board.  I'd like to really encourage you to get involved with your urban sisters, we supported a number of agri-related causes just because somebody belonged to our group and somebody came to a meeting and gave a presentation and talked about their side of the position, and you can make your efforts go a whole lot farther if you {?} will help support you getting on those boards and maybe support you on those boards for your position.  I guess I'd just like to encourage you to do that.

 

Well we've heard that we really although we can talk about quantity we can't separate from quality of water.  You know there both issues.  I was thinking of an example of international sphere of a group of Atto Islands in the South Pacific that our passe was recently involved with.  They had asked our government to ask them provide flush toilets.  Well this is an altaw where the water table is very high.  I mean the whole idea of flush toilets was pretty much out of the question.  And yet, they were very seriously asking for that.  Well in studying their culture, we found out that, in fact, they were an ideal group of people who could respond to the whole use of dry composting, they had a lack of fertilizer, they had arrangements of their social morres where they deficated on the beaches, which was effecting the water, so setting up composting toilets on the beach, or where ever they wanted to put them.  Actually turned out to be a better idea in terms of not affecting water quality, saving water, conserving water, it answered all of the things, and actually they were 10 steps ahead of us back in Australia, by doing this kind of thing, and they bought the idea, they were enthused about it.  And it's an example of how we have to think beyond where we're at, cause there are many cultures who are ready to go on to the conservation level and are willing to try it and have umpteen  

ways that they can use the composting.  So I think we need to be thinking even more broadly, more advanced in terms of what's being introduced around the world as examples to resolutions to problems that people are raising.

 

An issue I raised yesterday, was the abandoned wells problem that exists, and how the abandoned wells are a completely open condway for pollution to go down.  In our area of Southwestern Ontario

it's been estimated that we have 20,000 to 40,000 abandoned wells that no one knows where they are, they have no trace of them.  For the last fifty years, we've had controls of how they have to be plugged and properly filled in.  But it's the wells that pre-date 1947 that are a real problem, and when you think of that many wells there's an awful lot of stuff going into our ground water.

 

I just want to share this with you, I just returned from South Africa {?} with the social {?} country member of the world met, we meet every three years, there's 70 countries, and 2,000 delegates, so they took us to the top of the moutain and we had to go to the wash room so I opened up the door, couldn't make it up there, so I had to call two ladies to boost me up nearly four feet, to get up to sit on the toilet, and than help me back down, and it has something to do with the water on the top of the mountain and the flushers, I haven't figured it out, and had to be lifted up about three or four feet to make it.

 

If we have covered the gammit, I'm leaving it open to you, but I see a number of you putting your books together, and getting ready to leave.  Are there any other issues.  Or maybe we should say those of you that wanna leave now might wanna take off, and if there's others that wanna stick around and talk for a little longer.  I'm not quite sure when, we have another fifteen minutes. 

 

At the last international conference which was in Australia, I was lucky to have a woman from Uganda visit with me.  And I did all the right things, I took her out and I showed are various views, and when she came to our creeks, which she called streams, she said, goodness me all your countries running away, your streams are muddy.  And I felt like saying, our streams are always muddy, we're just used to it, you don't see it.  And I think that the minute you start seeing the problem which from what I can hear you are.  Than you've got a hope, but in our area there are some people who see it and some people who don't.  And so there are some people who are willing to plant along the sides of the creeks and there are others who say you can't do that because you'll get fires, you'll get foxes, you'll get rabbits, and it's all in your head what you see and what you don't see, so having Gertrude visit was very good for me.

That reminds of the session that we just had on global warming someone from America was saying that they didn't think there was a problem and someone from Australia said well maybe you think that but we have a whole right over my town, so it's all about where you live.

 

Any other burning issues.

 

It looks like we've heard from everybody here.

 

Particularly in the area just north of here, we have allot of underground water sources, springs and so forth, and when it rains heavily like its been raining of course you have the combination of the spring water and all the surface water, and it's a terrible erosion problem.  And so what they do is they come in with this machine and they lay perferrated tile, yes plastic tubes, and so the water that comes down goes into that and is carried down to an outlet, a stream, and it drains the fields without the erosion effect.  And they usually put rough stone over it, sort of like a french drain, and than you put the soil over that and than do grass planting usually of variety or something of that sort to get it seeded well. And than when you are moving your equipment like if your plowing you just lift the plows and go over it.  You down plow it under it.  And one of things that you must guarantee is that you will maintain that tile area for a minimum of ten years, that you have to keep it open. 

 

We've had a farm tile drained, it cost you about $500 per acre to tile drain your land in our area.  We have our lawn for example, around our house which is a couple of acres in size, only the size that it is because we had to drain is systematically every five feet all the way across.  We had to fill our septic tank with water and sink it because that was the only way we could do it.  The lawn is so large because we had to get above the water table in order to put our tile bed.  And our hillsides are just solid springs and Artisian wells.  And its like that all over.  Just the substrata of the soil and where the gravel, we come from an area of terminal and resessional marines, and there's allot of gravel and it forces the water up in very strange patterns.  And everybody tile drains.  And we just plant right over top of them.  The only way we find where our tile drains are, we try to maintain the outlet, but we use the aerial photographs and if their taken right in the spring, we can find from the aerial photographs right where they are and they've been in our fields for over a hundred years, some of them.

 

I was going to say technology wise, theres an awful lot of information available about the diminishing water resources of the world.  I was in Kahn and went to the aerospace center there, where they build the satellites, and they showed us how the fly the satellites, you think you do something and nobody knows about it.  I'll use the illustration for farmers, you know, particularly when a tornatoe comes through and you say that it took out fifty fruit trees, well do you realize that the insurance companies pay to have those satellites fly over and take the picture of that area, and than they tell you no you didn't loose fifty trees, you only lost ten.  But the interesting thing about it is with their photographs, their able to show just what you were talking about, about the lowering of the water tables in some areas of the world and the raise of water in other areas of the world.  And there trying to get governments to support conservation measures, because their very well aware of the fact of what happening in the universe on the water.

 

That's in terms of quantity, in terms of quality there are also using GIS now a great deal to determine where the hot spots are in the world.  Where are the most likely high risk kinds of areas for pollution, and going after those areas especially for research, and looking at broader research, for example immuniogical studies of people that are living in those regions to find out you know, how their systems have been affected by those particular pollutants.

 

I don't do anything except run around.  We're facing real serious problems even on our oceans and other major bodies of water because the Isaeli's are planning to build five what they call cities on the sea.  They will have like docks piers that run out, and it will be on the shelf, that along their shore, and their promoting building five of these cities to ease their congestion.  We're seeing the same thing in Japan, where you know they have allot of