And this is a slide show and another is an overhead presentation and these are actually presentations that we give to our customers and but I think that you'll sort of see what our story is as well and also for those of you who are getting kind of home sick like I am, I haven't been in a big city for this many days at a time and away from my children for this many days at a time ever. And so I am really looking forward to seeing some pictures of the land again for those of you who live on the land and these are photographs that I have taken of the land in the Flint Hills area of Kansas where we raise our beef. Get the lights here. Ok this is a program about the land and the way of life on the land and I particularly like to talk about we as ranchers in our co-op desire to conserve the natural resources on our land, the prairie, the forest, our water resources and wildlife and I'd also like to talk about our hope of preserving the rich human culture and community and family life in a rural neighborhoods and especially how children can gain from all of this. And I'll also talk about the mission of our grass fed beef cooperative. To me the prairie begins with fire and we don't burn every year, but we do more often than not. Its one of the most stressful and dramatic and beautiful of our experiences as ranchers and this is as I'll explain later. Our ecosystem depends on fire its a very natural process where we live. Although in the workshop on trading carbon emissions I've learned I don't know what we'll do if we can't burn anymore because again, it will actually turn sort of a scrubby forest. Without fire unless we used intense chemical control of woody plants they would come in and evade so that's kind of an interesting thing to think about. But this is a picture of a small tornado of smoke and its an eerie phenomenon I've seen when two wind driven lines of fire meet each other. Fire opens up the canopy and eliminates the accumulated litter or dead plant mass that's near the surface of the prairie exposing the soil to the warming sun, black ash then insulates the soil at night and increases nitrogen fixation. This loss of soil does not reduce organic matter. Because 95% of grass is organic matter in the root mass which dies and is replaced every two to four years increasing water filtration water and adding nutrients. So in fact, where many eco-systems employ microbial decomposers to reduce their systems above ground trash to useable form, tall grass prairie seems to rely on fire as the major process in recycling above ground nutrients. This is my husband with our water sprayer controlling the edge of a prescribed burn. Grasses can withstand the onslaught of fire and the grazing of animals because they adapted and developed under these two forces. Unlike most plants which grow from their tips to add length, grasses grow from their base emerging from a bud at or below the soil's surface as a result, fire controls the invasion of woody shrubs and certain invasive plants without the use of chemicals. Only a few days after a burn, the grass begins to emerge tiny and light green incredibly even over all the hills. But the prairie is much more than just monocuts or grasses, there's a tremendous diversity of veracious plants or Forbes which grow in partnership with the grasses. This beautiful aldendigo is a legume that is one of the first large blooming flowers. Legumes of course have nodules on their root system which naturally fix nitrogen in the soil. A non-chemical fertilizer source. The ground plum milk fetch is another early plant. It produces a small fruit that taste just like pea pods. This is a picture of our pasture in June that was not burned due to a winter and spring drought. You can see the previous years dry grass in amongst the current seasons. As summer progresses, the grasses share space with other beautiful wild flowers. This is the Worly Vervaine, not a desirable plant for grazing but an awfully interesting flower. This is the mid summer blooming yellow ear yellow prairie cone flower. This is the some seed head of big bloom stem and this is a three or a turkey foot spikelet or seed head that's sent up about mid season and these seed heads don't really result in much production because most of that is done through the rhizomes or stolems in the root system. Still the large seed heads do provide a seed bank in case of drought or other calamities to the mother plant and they are very beautiful. Now there are a number of grazing systems utilized where we live, we usually try to do something different on each pasture each year so that it gets changed and rotated. There's early intensive grazing or double stocking where there one steer for every two acres for about 90 days and then the cattle are taken out on July 15th. There's a 3/4 season grazing, where they are in for about 120 days and there's one steer for three acres out on August 15th. And then there's also full season where there's one steer for four acres and they come out in the end of the grazing season in October and then also some of the ranchers in our co-op actually use rotational grazing which many of you are probably familiar with the large paddocks and water systems and so forth. For mid summer around July 15th until the fall the cattle are then gathered in off the pastures and brought down into the gathering pens and there sorted and weighed. All the neighbors come and help and the kids like to watch. Now I'd like to move away from the upland prairie and as you look out over the low flat creek bottom, the fields in the distance you can see the ridge beyond the line of trees at its base. These timbered areas at the base of the ridges make up the other eco-system of the flint hills of Kansas. In some places the trees are quite extensive. Generally there's a water course running through them or nearby. Here in late March, the native Redbuds are just opening up. The summer forest is lush and full of life. The Sweet William Wild Flowers bloom in May. These are choke cherry blooms. One wet year we found 10 different kinds of mushrooms in one day in the woods. But the most fascinating of our natural resources to me is our wild life no matter how small or large. When we first found this little fawn my children were so amazed at how tiny and how still it was. We realized it was actually holding its breath while we stood around and watched it and of course we didn't touch it and that night its mom came and took it away. These are pictures just taken from my front porch and my back porch in the winter there. There eating acorns. Now I'd like to switch from natural to human resources. And talk about the human culture where I live. Ranch life has always had a lot of physical and economic dangers and in history ranch communities are full of tragedy and broken dreams as I am sure in many areas. This is a child's gravestone in an isolated abandoned cemetery. But we also have a lot going on that we are very proud of. This is our courthouse. It was built with horsepower in 1873 and a very beautiful building that we are all very proud of. This is a downtown parade that we have with a rodeo every year. Everyone rides their horses. That's my daughter there waving at us. We try to share our ranch experiences with others. This is a truck load of town kids on a field trip coming out to look at the pastures and the cows up close. They are having a good time. And I'd like to talk about children living on the he land and how important it is for them to have hands on up close experiences with nature. I think this is essential if the next generation is to developments a deep appreciation for wild places. Heres my kids with their grandfather picking greens which are edible plants that they will have for lunch. And they are jumping into a leaf pile in the woods. On a hike in the early morning, kind of dream like. Playing hide and go seek and hiking in the tall grass. Also their interactions with wild creatures give them an understanding of how the ecosystem is put together. Heres a typical whopper that we catch on our place. And we like to catch just every thing we can, but we have a one day rule where we always take everything back within one day to where we found it. We look everything up in a guide book and learn about where they find shelter and what they eat and what eats them, that's a little salamander. This little friend was so enchanted with this baby garter snake that right after I took this picture she lifted it up and kissed it. That's really something. And also on the farm children learn about the cycles of birth, life, and death and how to care for animals. They have the opportunity to learn about different domestic species and behaviors, health problems, shelter requirements and they learn to take responsibility and have an important job. My kids favorite animals is always their bucket calves. They learn to play and train with their calf, and most of all they learn to treat animals with care and compassion. And this brings me to the story of tall grass prairie producers co-op which is an organization designed among other things to preserve a way of life that we see disappearing in the flint hills where I live. As the economic pressures of farming and the depressed drive more and more family farmers off the land to be replaced by absentee urban land lords or huge mega ranchers, corporate holdings. We live on a pretty long road in our neighborhood and we are the last full time family farmers where we live and of course I have outside employment that helps but my husband he is the last one. So its really hit our neighborhood very hard. These are some pictures taken at events where we've served our beef. Our idea is to market our own beef and hopefully gain a decent return on it so we can stay on the land. And the way we thought of to do this is to offer the customer a healthier alternative that is low fat or free range beef raised on grasses or forage rather than on feed grain crops, not that we feel that feed grain or feed lot far fed beef are bad, it is just an alternative for people who need to eat less fat. It is just an alternative. We do try, I want to mention here, our marketing. To market positively, we do have to tell how our beef is different so to a certain extent we have to distinguish it from conventional beef. Our idea is certainly not to hurt conventional beef markets and we are so tiny I mean we are just a little, we are not going to have a big impact on things. But we do feel a lot of solidarity with all farmers. Our animals also have no hormone implants or antibiotics in their feed and as I said, they have never been confined in a feed lot. For customers who are especially concerned about the environment and animal welfare, our production model also has appeal. And we also test all our beef before we market it for tenderness and mostly the flavor is the thing that keeps most of our customers coming back. This lady is a dietician whose been one of our primary advocates since we started because she manages a number of focus groups of women who are at high risk of breast cancer and have to have a low fat diets is the way they have chosen to manage this risk and so she is thrilled that they have our product. We have found our road to be a very difficult one requiring more effort than we dreamed. I'll talk about that in a little bit. We really have a lot of hope and this is one of our ranchers also, you've seen several of them. We have a father and a mother and then son, he is about, his separate ranch joins, he is about to get married so we have a new family coming in. And we are achieving success slowly, but we feel that we have a very worthy product. This is a line at our booth at an outdoor concern held in the hills. It was by far the longest line of any of the concessions, even though our meals were slightly more expensive and I think that people really have an interest in regional products and farmer grown, farmer marketed products when they have the opportunity. So in summer we have a slogan and that is healthy animals, healthy land and healthy people. We raise healthy animals in their natural state. Free to roam in wide open spaces. This is a nutritional presentation that we also give to our customers especially to dietician groups and people who have particular interests in nutritional issues and I'll start out with the food guide pyramid and notice the meat group at this level and how the food pyramid as you know, is emphasized to have a portion of each group that we should have in our diet and obviously, the fats group at the top is the one that we are supposed to limit as much as possible. And why is that? You probably are all familiar with the different serious diseases that are now known to be connected with the diet too high in fat. Seems like they are always coming up with something else. So consumers now understand this and one of the things that they usually use is the American Heart Association Guidelines. And they do have guidelines for meat and they say that it can be part of a healthy diet, but there are restrictions on fat content and I have converted these to a four ounce uncooked serving so you have basically 5 to 6 grams of fat is the maximum and a little over two grams saturated fat and it should be less than 30% of calories so those of you who keep track of those things its pretty low. This is the USDA quality grading system. This is based on the degree of marbling and marbling is intramuscular fat in the muscle. Probably many of you know about that. And you also know that ironically the more fat the higher the grade and this is the same government agency that gave us the food pyramid so its a little ironic for the consumer but there's a lot of history to this and I know everyone means well and basically the beef industry has continued to back this particular system. And so basically the market pays more for the fatter grade of cattle. And so basically in effect the USDA grading system stands the food pyramid on its head. Encouraging producers to grow beef with as much fat as possible. Which in view of our knowledge of heart disease and other obesity related illnesses, and doctors and dieticians with the media close at hand, preach avoidance of red meat. Especially high fat beefs so consumers are shunning beef as an inherently unhealthy food. And you ask how does this come to be? Is beef naturally high in fat? Lets take a look at some history. Actually in the early days my grandparents raised grass finished beef in the Kansas flint hills. These cattle were never confined or fed any grain and were shipped directly off pastures into urban markets. Consumers could not get enough of the rich flavor of grass fed beef and the markets grew in a nice healthy way. Then in world war II, we had some grain surpluses develop and there's some other issues that came in that's the simplest way to describe it, and basically we got rid of the grain through feeding it to cattle and other livestock and the USDA encouraged this and we had the grading levels develop which we looked at earlier and the very large commercial feed lot system which we have now came into being. So today because of price penalties from grading, ranchers no longer market pasture finished or grass finished beef. We eat it at home with our families but we can't sell it at a profit or it will be penalized. And consumers can't buy it. Because cattle are fattened in feed lots. Instead of beef finished on grass on the ranches, they are basically shipped to large commercial lots and they are confined in large pens and fed very large amounts of grain and this averages, of course they eat more towards the end of the period because their bigger, but it averages around 25lbs a day for a several month period. They are given hormone implants to speed their gain and antibiotics in their feed which keep down the diseases which often times result from confinement. And then the concentrated waste is managed in lagoons. And as you know this results in highly marbled beef which receives a premium in the beef market. But doctors tell us not to eat it. So the beef industry has lost a lot of market share. And that's what worries us and it seems like you know, so few family ranches left and we feel like instead of trying to argue or silence the consumers, I am thinking of the Oprah case. I believe in freedom of speech also and I feel like that actually didn't help the beef industry a whole lot to draw a lot of attention to that. But anyway we think that we should try to bring people back to eating beef who have quit eating it for various reasons and that's why we formed our cooperative and also I might mention here too; really the reason why we formed our cooperative way back about four years ago was because we wanted to raise beef like our grandparents did and knew that it was a perfect match of the natural resources that we have where we are. We don't need to send our beef away to feed lots to be fattened, we can raise good been here. That's good beef too, but we can raise it here. So what we are really doing is matching our natural resources with our production marketing. I don't usually say that because I've learned in marketing that you are never supposed to start out with the product that you want to sell. You are supposed to listen to the consumer and then produce what they want. But we think its worked both ways really. It does work because these benefits are very attractive to producers or to consumers also. And that's the low fat and flavor and so what we have done is tried to bring back the grass fed production model now in the 1990s, we have the term free range which we have sort of gotten from the chicken people. But it is the buzz word in the market that's what people want is free reign. So that's what were calling it. And basically the animals are born and grown entirely on the pasture. They are never confined. Their raised on grasses and forages and hay, never fattened on grain. We do give them some protein supplement during low forage periods. We have to do that in our climate and that's so basically in snow cover in the winter or if we have a drought period in our forage fails we will give them some supplement. And then basically because our consumers feel very strongly, they don't want hormones in the product, we don't put any in there and we have no antibiotics in the feed. We do allow treatment by antibiotics of our cattle if they are sick and then we follow the withdrawal period so we are not absolutely no antibiotics because we sort of feel its hypocritical to, I mean some companies they say no antibiotics so they treat the sick animals and they feed them to the other people I guess. We just, you know, feel like its very safe if its done that way and that the main concern is with the over use of sub-therapeutic antibiotics so that's what we've done there. And the result is very lean beef from animals that have been grown to healthy weights but not fattened and so our beef has fewer grams of cholesterol and we are actually finding higher levels relative levels of protein and iron. Our dietician has been looking at that with us. Also, since have such a high yield and less fat there's more edible beef per portion. To give you some idea of the dramatic differences in fat level and how tall grass compares to conventional beef. This is a chart comparing it to 1/4 inch trim select beef and actually our beef has a little back fat we usually don't have to trim it. And just for your information, our cubed or minute steaks are from the bottom round and our stir fries are from the bottom flank or clod and our stew meat is just from selected trim. And actually comparisons to USDA choice would be even more striking, but we are trying to compare to the beef that consumers consider to be lean beef in the market place. We have really challenged our paradigm of thinking with these nutritional tests and if you have any doubts about these figures, I can send you the original lab results. Our local beef council was actually a little bit not real hopeful at first because they just didn't believe it. And its true you just think about it. I'll go on to the next. The reason why its so much lower in fat is because of the lifestyle and think what would happen to your body if you were in a feed lot type situation. Where like you were locked in an apartment and we fed you rich food all day for several months and you didn't get any exercise. That's kind of what happens to cattle. Their not naturally fat animals and you compare that to how you would look and feel if you had sort of a health spa type lifestyle of cattle in pastures where they are roaming free on a big playground and basically eating salad all day and so that's why there is so much difference. And our main competitor of course is chicken. We have a couple of our steaks like T bone and rib steak, they are not going to compete with chicken. But with chicken breasts anyway, but skinless chicken breasts compared to an average of five our of cuts down here, of our leaner cuts is quite comparable. So we can really offer the consumer who has been restricted to a chicken diet, maybe eaten a whole chicken breast for the 100th time, Mom why don't you get me something different, we've heard a lot of women say my husband is just so tired of chicken. And so we can give this consumer the alternative of lean beef. And the main thing that we hear is tenderness. Well isn't it going to be tough? And this is the result again I think of the grading system that people have associated toughness with fat and its true, fat is tender. If you want to bite down on a piece of lard, you don't have to chew very hard. But that isn't why beef is tender, there is a lot of other, about 5% of it is attributable to that but there really are some other very important factors and I think the whole beef industry is still trying to figure this out and it is a struggle for all of us. But the main things that we have done to control tenderness are genetics. We use British early maturing breeds, that's basically Hereford and Angus which I am sure you are all familiar with. On our climate on our grass they do the best for tenderness and we insure a very special handling of our cattle particularly at slaughter to avoid toughening and we use the highest quality forage grass in the world we think. Which is the tall grass prairie in Kansas. That's a high quality diet. We fully age our beef our beef, that's 14 to 21 days to maximize tenderness and most conventional beef in the supermarket has only been aged 3 or 4 days so that's a big advantage. And then we also, we bought a little machine called a Werner Bratsler Sheer tester. It measures the force that it takes to cut through a steak and we test all of our beef for tenderness. And we have had to reject a few animals and they go to ground beef and so forth. But I think we have a pretty good record and we are really very concerned with tenderness. And then the bonus is flavor. And I think in this day of dies consciousness, people are pretty tired of having to say well, I need to make do with less. And less fat, less salt, less sugar and its hard to feel satisfied with less. So the amazing news about this type of product, all our customers tell us is its special attribute of more flavor and its a very full bodied true beef flavor that especially some of the old timers have said now this is what beef is supposed to taste like. That's what they grew up on. And so I really think its a healthy food that can satisfy people and our slogan is Taste the Goodness of the Prairie. Cause a lot of people that we sell to, particularly the ranchers in our area and the rural people that are retired and stuff, they don't care about fat. They are wanting flavor and that's why they are buying it. And then another question people say well do you grade your beef? We slaughter in a small processing plant that we do not own, we just contract and no, we don't use the grading systems. Its called no-roll beef, that is, its inspected without being graded, but it is of course USDA inspected and that's so that we can sell across state lines. And so its inspected by the federal government but not graded and this is our label and this is the biggest I have ever worked on in my life. Getting this label. This is what worries me about small producers. Its very technical to get this it took us about three years to get all these things. But on another sense, I think its good. Our government is protecting us, we are giving consumers accurate information and that's important too. I feel pretty confident now that when I buy something that people have been very careful. And basically our label instead of just the grade that you might see on it, we try to give our consumers as much information as possible about our product. For example, where did this beef come from? Well, it came from Kansas. And its got a brand name, they will know that its going to be the same type of beef every time. Most times also you never know how the mean you buy was raised. So we have these special claims which they are a little hard to read there, but for those of you who are interested these are the claims that we have done all the documentation for the United States Department of Agriculture to put on there. Actually when we first started we thought, we will just put, raised on family ranch on the bottom of our label. But no, we couldn't do that until we had done all the documentation through the USDA. So again, I am glad of that, I am glad that they are not letting people just make, you know, claims that aren't substantiated. And we are all family ranchers, we do all the work on our places. We don't all own our land cause we can't afford it. A lot of us lease, but we are, we do the day to day work on our land. And also the other thing that has been the biggest step for us has been to produce the nutritional facts panel in our products so we can tell the consumer about these wonderful nutritional attributes and then finally we have cooking instructions because lean beef does need to be cooked carefully and not overcooked. And basically those guidelines are to thaw completely, grill it 1/3 less time because it doesn't have the insulating fat of other beef. Never cook it past medium and slow cooking is really good for the roast and marinating like we had our wonderful beef salad from Australia. Of course that was range fed beef I understand and that was marinated and done so nicely. So the mission of our co-op is to produce healthy, premium quality beef in a way that preserves and nurtures our environment and families in a rural culture and the health and well being of our customers. And I do have quite a bit more information. I need to quit because I want Mae to have time. But I had another section here about cooperative formation and development. I have a little outline here if anyone would like it. Mae can I have about two more minutes? I'd hate to cut you short. I don't mean to. But basically, This is a more detailed mission statement, but we have our stewardship goals and our production model and marketing goals and we have a link with the consumer but down at the bottom also is outreach. We very much, we have a lot of deeper feelings about what we are doing than just to try to make money, which we are still struggling to do. Our processing costs are so high and our promotional costs are so high. We definitely have not officially succeeded yet. But we have our beef now in 26 states. We are in three large distributors. These are steps that we have just achieve in the last few months after three years of work. So I think that we have as good a chance as we've ever had at making it. Some of our barriers are capital formation and processing costs. One of our main goals is to provide a model and a source of advice for other small producers who might want to do what we are doing. That's why I am handing out this outline and that is some of the steps that we went through in forming our co-op. We really didn't have a model to go by so we sort of learned things the hard way. And these are just some ideas that I would recommend. And also I would also very strongly recommend that you do try to do this through a co-op because I think that you can pool your capital and your skills and your energy and this is a very hard thing to do by yourself. I have talked to a lot of individual producers who have tried to market grass fed beef. They have all given up, they burn out, its too much work. And its just a very big challenge and I also think that women as managers of these types of organizations have tremendous potential because we have these sorts of organizational skills that we have already done on our farms and ranches that can really help get something like this going. Will we have time for one or two questions if anyone has any questions? Yes ma'am.

(Audience participation) We don't have this where I come from and my doctor just told me that I need to reduce my fat and cholesterol and all that good stuff. But how does the price of your beef compare to other beef when it gets to the grocery store? We are more expensive and I can't tell you exactly how much more of course it depends on the region and where you are. The amazing thing is we are actually still not making money on a lot of the prices that we are using. I thing we need to increase our price and the problem is basically processing and labeling costs. But we are not as expensive really as expensive as buffalo or elk or some of the other specialty meats. When you consider the high yield of our product, that fact that you don't have a lot of fat left in the pan. I think its a very comparable buy, but it does have, like our ground beef is going to be maybe around $3.00 a pound as opposed to I mean you can get meat for $.99, or course you get this much fat in the bottom of your pan when you are done. And you don't have the flavor, you don't know where it came from and a number of other things. But it is a little more expensive and that's one thing you know, asking consumers to pay a little more, we found that people really don't care that much. They get so excited about knowing the health advantages of something and think what they pay per ounce of potato chips and things that don't help them at all. This is something that is going to make their kids strong and healthy and so its price is somewhat of a barrier, but it hasn't been, we were more worried about it than maybe we should have been. The problem is ethically, we want to keep it as inexpensive as we can so that more people can afford to buy it. But our costs are quite high. Until we get our volume up and we are hoping that once we do get our volume up and reach our overheads and break even that we can make it even more competitive. Does it get to the supermarket? We are in, its been really hard cause you have to have a high supply before any big supermarket will look at you. So our niche that we have found is in small natural food stores that have a frozen case and so they will just buy, not a big selection and we have everything criovaced and case ready, fully labeled cause they don't have butchers and so that's how they purchase the beef is that way. Can you buy it by a whole or half or quarters or strictly in pieces? Well locally, where people can come and pick it up and we can get it to them, we do sell by quarters and halves. We have lots of 20 and 10 pound boxes that we sell locally. But what's happened, what we have realized is that distribution for small firms like ours is the biggest problem. I mean every one of us ranchers has, we have all laughed about how. I just drove 120 miles to sell 60 pounds of beef, I mean it doesn't make sense. And you have got to figure out a way to get the volume so that delivery costs makes sense. We want everyone to have it and that's helped us to learn about our product, to sell locally but it has been unprofitable and pretty hard on us economically. So that's why when we got these distributors that really helped us a lot. Hi I am Shannon Week from Australia. If I could just give you some information. We had similar situation in Australia where the beef production and beef consumption was declining due to health risks. And people were switching to pork and chicken and the like. The beef industry came back with new cuts, new ways of actually producing the meat but they also came back with a brilliant marketing champaign. Which was called Lean Towards Beef. Now this was an advertisement champaign that relied on giving out small cards of recipes at butchers, sensational champaign comparing the nutritional benefits of beef with vegetable and other meats in very short advertisements. And it was also a series of this called shortcuts. Which were recipes for busy families. You could have a nutritious meal on the table in ten minutes flat. So I am happy to put you in contact with anyone who can help you with that. But it was an excellent champaign and it turned the consumption of beef right around. Thank you very much. Now I will turn the program over to Mae who has been very patient.

Thank you. I wonder what time we have. I thank you very much for turning up. Cause we are all worried about people coming. I am Mae from Uganda. And Uganda is found in the Eastern part of Africa. I would like to talk about possible ways of linking agriculture production to marketing. And as we do this, can we think about gender? Trying to find out a gender responsive matter for developing a marketing system. My background, a trainer and lecturer in the university in Uganda. So that's the background of why I think about gender. So the production is done using very low technology like the whole defined tractors. That tractor is basically for very large farms. But when we are thinking about poverty reduction, we are thinking about the very poor people in rural areas. So we ask around how can we_________ before we are allowed and encouraged to diversify crops in order to make these crops tradeables. Most of the time in the 80s we were producing mainly for food production and some of the big farm holders could really export or sell in the markets in town. But now that we have diversification the people had to be encouraged to move from the growing of subsistence production, like sweet potato, matowkay or bananas to something that could be easily tradeable, easily switched to the market. At the same time, the way that we had our market liberalization was to try and allow people, farmers to get straight to the markets instead of the marketing boards for example and instead of middlemen who could go to the villages and buy this produce, take it to the market. This time the farmer himself or herself, could travel and get the products to the markets. As such I use this background and say to what extent do we have equal access and participation to the market. How can we insure this. Now that we can diversify crops in order to find out which crops can get to the market as easier as possible and what type of crops can we invest in. What we have done in Uganda people have focused very much on grains, especially maze and beans is what I followed in my study. Because although people we are trying to diversify maze by undertaking hybrid, maze and hybrid bins, apart from getting these for selling in the market it's also helping on food security, so I thought this was a good way for looking at, although we have diversification, but we can also try to insure food security. Apart from that, farmers have engaged in vegetables and a pitch on pepper, green and red pepper, and this is basically because it's very easy to move around, they try to get it when it is still very raw than they can move it from on station to another without really getting perished. I picked on passion fruits, they were growing also pineapples, and paw-paws, but the passion fruits people preferred passion fruits to look system towards marketing basically because it is very easy to grow considering the land problem. Most of the people growing this had the land problem but they could really put very few stalks but try to get maximum product.

Because I don't want my head to be seen.

What we do than to try and find out as we try to develop a model or a way we could consider equal participation in the market we need to look at what is really happening in the state, within the market, and within the household. Because there is no way we can look at the market without looking at what is happening in the household and when we talk about the household we mean what is really happening with the farming and who undertakes that farming, what types of crops, just like I have shown you. And than we consider the market we look at issues like if something is grown at household level who takes this produce to the market so we try to follow a system from the production to the market. Than as we look inside the market we try to find out what takes place within the market, and here we will be talking about the commodity market from inside the sector to the international market which is the export market. As such we need the state, to give us export license, to give us standards, we have the Bureau of Products which states what type of quality of the products should be sent to international level, as such we look at the state and that is Uganda, and I've written it in big letters, my country, so we try to ask ourselves, what is available to support the so called market system we want to propose. Now in Uganda we have decentralized governments now this means that the state power, the state support is channeled to district level that you can try to get extension service, like if you want pesticides and so on, you can get district level, instead of driving all the way to the capital or to the ministries. Now services are nearer to the people through the districts. So we have decentralized governments. We than ask ourselves, how can the decentralized governments help us to reach to the market, how can it help us to reach to production we than think about what we need and who need seed in terms of extension service. What type of crops should we grow, where can we get advise from, for example, with the agriculture officer. So we start finding out what we can get from district level. Than another support we have is the poverty irradication action plan. Uganda formulation of an action plan, and it's almost through. And within the provided irradication plan we have infrastructure focusing on roads which is transport and than marketing the space itself to be improved. Most of the time we would find, markets not being available to people because of transport problems. So now we have the perfect irradication plan having policy guidelines with what to do when, especially with infrastructure.

Question: Now when they go to local markets to whom are they selling? Who are the customers?

Answer: Now the customers at the local market, remember we've try to get rid of the middle man, this is the middle man. So this is where now we can find the middle man. They went somewhere. This system I got so interested, because it shows you the sights where you can track how commodities really get devalued or where someone can just increase the price, from buying from you for a really low price.

Yeah, from the rural market, the market which is nearer to you. The middle man can than get the products from there and get to the town, or get out of Uganda. So they wait for you somewhere. They make money, but not you. We want this money to get the farmer. But rarely does it get to him or her.

Another support, for formulating a marketing system is that we have a agriculture modernization scheme informing that the farmers can get support on information and developing technology centers at district level, what happens it that the government, the angios are trying to create centers at district level. It is a system we're just trying to development, but I thought within my study, now that the middle problem is not knowing the right price at the right time, can we use this system where they will have like a computer at a district level or someone trying to note the prices over seasons. So that people can go there and at lease have information about what price and when. Now, I got challenged on that when I presenting the findings to the rural community, in that they were asking me to what extent would this be accessible. Especially the women thought they might be, you know they don't have that power to reach to whatever that information might be. But than what I suggested was that, I had realized that they have women organizations and clubs could than use these by saving, could we fund raise for a person to go for this information and bring it back to us. Not all of them have to go to the information center. That's what I thought. Now after looking at the sites, the situation analysis, and trying to find out what support we have from the state. Than I would like us to look at the market as a process. That is, what really happens within the market. Before we can propose the system. What I did with that was to try and find the sites. Someone prodded me this is what was going to talk about. Those sites and determinants of access to and participation. And within these what ________ trying to find out the root from marketing to production. What really happens in between and than within the market. What determines someone is going to the market and insuring that they can sell. And what happens from the selling in the rural commodity market to the international market. How many people produce which type of crop. So I go into the grains, the vegetables, and the fruits. And than I follow-up a number of farmers and what really surprises, the farmers who undertake especially the fruits and grains, very few of them can get to the market, whereas for the vegetables, most of them can get to the rural commodity market and the international market. Reason being, for the grains and the fruits there's a high demand of these products even at national level. And people could even transfer grains from one district to another so there even the national level markets were really calling in for these products but for the vegetables like pepper, very few people were consuming pepper as a product from the market, but at the same time it was a being grown at a larger scale compared to the grains and fruit. So those people who could decide to grow pepper than must have had some information about the market for pepper. OK. So, what the rural people than were asking me as I was presenting some of the findings was a question, was a question, that than do you think all of us should turn to growing pepper because it seems that it is easier to export. But than it was a challenging question in that as we think about market, we have always to think about food security not everything has to be marketed really, but the important thing with grains those people were really of the view that the reason why they have kept on getting into grains, although they are changing into hybrid also for food security. So behind everything as we look at the marketing system. What goes back to the household. Not only in the marketing system but also in food security.

Question: For your food security issues, what systems of storage do you have for local storage in case of shortage or problem?

Answer: That is one of the recommendation, the recommendations that I have in that depending on the district where I undertook research which is in PG district in the center and Lireao. They didn't have specific storage facilities, you are right. Whereas comparing to the Northern side where storage was really a tradition, over time they've had famine and food shortages. So they have provisions for storage, little houses built. But in PG district, people were wondering whether they knew about the white famine. Yet, probed into food security issues, they talk about having one meal instead of three meals long time ago. Why do think others were bringing issues of less fewer wood, so I can't cook for so many times. But then when you probe more, you really feel, it's an issue of food, food getting less and less. But what they proposed as recommendations, we're really trying to set up food storage facilities at county and sub-county level. Which is really far. But in Lirearo they were suggesting communities, which is like a village, than they get into the center of the village, depending on the houses, and they make like a cooperative, there people bring in food over time, you bring in, you bring in, but than when it comes to starvation, you try to distribute the food. When we are looking at that, I tried to sensitize, because most people were of the view that, they can only sell grains, in times of surplus, they sell when there's a surplus, but then when you look at storage, if you don't have anything stored over time, is that really a surplus. So within that studying factor, I'm trying to define surplus. But they sell in order to get those things they can't grow. Like salts, sugar, and so on. But the sort of marketing system I'm trying to propose is far from just sub-systems, I want them to change their economic status, so it is bigger than just the household.

Question: I'm wondering what the overall effects of are using hybrids rather than fertile seeds has been, are people finding it easy to adjust to having to buy seed every year or it is a problem for some people?

Answer: Like the maze, it is really a problem because they have to, when you store the seeds, you need the agriculture person to help you treat it, you know treat it and preserve it for some time. You know that wait for the right season and so on. So those are problems they are finding. But all those problems subside when they get really increased production looking for the agriculture officer all around. The moment they get through. A high increased production and than increased income. They forget. So they were weighing really the traditional may seed and the hybrid. And they say let's go on with the hybrid. What can we do to get to a gender responsive market system? What I suggest is that we try to look at the production and with the production, I than get into what you are thinking about. With the production we should look into the implications of growing all these to the gender division of labor. The roles. The time used their productive and community gender roles. And I explain, with the hybrids we have to look into who does what within the planting. Now the recent issue on clearing land because people are after an increased production they have also extend the plot of land where the used to grow. So this has land implication on ownership of land, and for women it is still a problem because very few really control the land, you know own it, most of them just have access but not necessarily allowing you to grow huge plots of land. So if it requires clearing than it is the men who clear the land. Therefore, we have a problem there, I want to plant hybrid maze, I want to plant pepper, I want to plant passion fruit, but who will clear the land for me. Some of them have changed the roles, and said what can't I do. OK. And some of them have tried to form farming groups. So you go to one plot you help you friend, than you go to another, although it has a power issue in that it depends on who your partner is and whether you can be allowed to move that sort of labor to help another person. Than time used with passion fruits in the dry season, you need allot of water, especially in places where the land is not very fertile and the soils do not hold water for long, they need irrigation. But in terms of the area which I studied, they had ready to use water cans and getting from the well and coming and watering the passion fruits. It was very hard for them in terms of time and water collection. Than with reproductive work this is where most women as we thought as we think about from production to marketing, that system, can we also think about the domestic part of it. How can I combine domestic work with looking after the production and than thinking about that time I will go to the market, and if I get to the market, am I the one to sit in the rural market and sell and if I have to think about the international market, how am I going to reach out to the international market. I have a language problem, the quantity of my products are really few, and it's small. How can I compete with the international market. So they were thinking about all that domestic work, but also thinking about the time it will take for you to get information about international market, and than if you are to sell in the domestic market, how can I do it, bearing in mind, I have to look after children, I have to fetch water, I have to look after cattle. The political and community roles in Uganda now we have political participation. We want to be there, women want to be there, men want to be there. But the time it takes for you to participate in community activities and at the same time care about all this, in order to compete for with another person somewhere. In order to be in time for the season. All those have implications when your thinking about from production to marketing do we consider this.

Question: While you were talking about community you mentioned earlier, that women do have some organizations and clubs, some networks developed, could you describe what those informal networks are and what sort of structures and groups that they have?

Answer: Most of them started as friends, you know when people date, you get together in order to try and help the person who is prying on so on. So some of them started like that, but others started like church organizations, like Mother's Union, like YWCA, Young Women Farmers Association, like that. And now what is happening is that the reason why I undertook this study, was that from Beijing back to Uganda, so many people went back with news, you know, what can we do in order to bring up the rural women. And going back to the rural areas now, you can see so many organizations and clubs and community groups, coming up because people have realized that working alone might not be the solution. So the groups, some of the are like ten people, but they try to get together, but basically to share information. How we can get information, how can we get credit, how can we get the maze which Mrs. so and so got. So they try to get together, but previously it was for funerals, for the Mothers Union and so on. But now it's becoming really economic and trying to share, but it's confuse and so on.

With the market we mainly look at commodity tracking, let me explain, with commodity tracking we try to get from production to market system and we look at who can do what depending on the decisions on can take. Which I have labels here gender relations. Remember we talked about the household and producing within a household. It depends on the power relations, and decision making made within the household that a man and women can undertake to delivery products from the farm to the market. It also depends on the information a person has about prices, knowledge of which crop could be sold within which season. That one of labor ______economically _______. And since we are thinking about expanding our markets from just rural commodities markets to the international market, we need to know what is going on in the world. And within economic literacy this is what we have what is happening global wise, and which country can I sell to, and very few people go through this. Sometimes it ends here, before they can even get to the rural market. So when we get into the market system, we have to look into the institution of culture. All of our institutions have a certain culture, now the culture for the market is very interesting. They have rules. They have norms. And either can either enter or not. And so here within this model, I'm trying to evoke, I explain to the person who would like to use it that what you do here is to try to find out what makes people belong, what makes people belong to the export market. Because you just can't go there one day, it isn't a matter of you going there, but you have to know what is required of you, selling in the market, or what is required of you selling in the international market. Now with the commodity market with the rural and domestic market. There is a norm basically on quality of product, whether you are known to be a person who has been marketing for long, do you belong to a cooperative, must of the people try to get into a cooperative and go there as organizations. Whereas with the export market, there is so much to do with quantity. You can't just sell a little amount. Than you also need the license, you need to go through the government of a license, so those are the things we try to look at here. Than we end up with what we think than a person can gain by going through these steps. That is what I've called economic power or economic empowerment. And these are the benefits, and we can follow back and say, if I get to know what to do with the market, how can I than think about what product sells most, within which season. So the cycle goes on, and we end up with knowing what to look for between the production and the domestic market or the rural commodity market. What do I have to look for here. Within production we're talked about who does what. And who has the information about the prices at the local market, within the local market we have to think about the time it will take this person to get to the market, which is access. Who will sell my products in the market so I try to link and those are the networks. I try to link with the person who works in the market. But this will not help me so much in case I want a big scale of production. I want to get to the export market. And most people want to get to this. But the channel from here to here has allot to do with quality control and has allot to do with licensing. Now when I reach here that's when I look at the extent which women have the information, the extent which they can increase production here, what makes it easy for men to move from production to export. But within the study, I found that men and women, it depends on the class and economic status. So I divided my respondents into class and I also tried into education, I tried through contacts from abroad. And you would find out that most of the people who could get to here. Tried to organize themselves into cooperatives, into groups, or into community networks. That's why I really liked her presentation to come first. Thank you.

I'm sorry I never received an introduction for the lady to give. Could you please very quickly again tell us your position in Uganda and your background. A lecturer in the University, Macarari University is the main university, I'm a senior agenda trainer, and lecturer for rural development and technology, this is my Ph.D. piece so please. I'm trying on this. I'm in the process, I'm almost half way. The study although it is aiming at getting Ph.D., I want to walk through the poverty action plan which a talked through, and help the government and the rural people to find easier ways of getting access to the market. I want this rural woman to have money. Through knowing how to get to the market. Because most of them sit behind and their products get caught up somewhere. So we need to look through the sites where women drop out and can't reach the market. So I want to system to be developed which means it has to be a policy through government. So pray for me.