Good morning, everyone. Good afternoon. I'm Valentina Morales. I'm the specialist on the technical support for the team of family farming at the Faro office.  So welcome to the first version for the dialogue of knowing and practices of family farming. Before getting started, I would like to remind you that we have simultaneous interpretation and we're also going to be recording this session so that you can find it afterwards. We're going to share with you the link in the chat. So this series of dialogue on family farming and ecology wants to promote collaborative knowledge and the transfer of knowledge between the different stakeholders. And the purpose is to share the different contributions as part of the agri-food system agenda. So we have the global pillars for family farming and the priorities for Latin America and the Caribbean in the Santiago later from 2022. As I mentioned, and this is done through the technical, the regional technical platform for family farming. And we're going to share the link with you afterwards so you can access the recording. And we're going to have the technical support of family farming and the parliamentary networks. All the sessions are part of the global cooperation agenda to share all the knowledges. And we consider three topics. The first one, which is the first edition between November this year about the contribution of family farming as part of the climate agenda. And the next two topics that we're going to cover is the investment on family farming and the role of the sector to promote inclusive participation. And number three is family farming and construction of sustainable market. The first edition is co-organized with the family farming of the Mercosur and the coordination in the farming industry. We have had some dialogue about the potential of agriculture within family farming to face the different challenges of the transformation agenda. Particularly the challenges related to the climate. So we've had, this is the first session. The first one included the main practices of agriculture and the relation to family farming and with the mitigation of climate change and environmental agenda. And number two, a few weeks ago, focused on institutionality and agriculture. And we had presentations from Mercosur countries. And they discuss progress in public policies. And now this third and last session is going to be focusing on experiences from the different parts of the world about family farming and the importance of this transition towards agroecology. So having said that, we are going to have four presentations. We're going to start by Swati from India. She's an associate scientific at the World College. And she's going to be shared with us the experience in India. And then we're going to have a presentation by Arthur from Tolgo, Africa. He is the executive deputy secretary of the coordination of rural organizations. And he's also going to be sharing our experience on the national strategy. And then we're going to have a presentation about this from Spain, the experience about the organic farming experience at El Caio. And finally, we're going to have a presentation by Guillermo Brady, the head of the family farming participation and the parliamentary networks of fao. He is going to share without the progress on the bill that it's being discussed. After the four presentations, we are going to have a Q&A session. So we're later invited to take notes about these four presentations so that at the end we can have a dialogue or conversation with the audience. So I'm going to tell the presenters, the speakers how they are doing with time. So we're going to start with Swati's presentation. So if you're ready, please you can get started and you're going to have 15 minutes. And I'm going to let you know as soon as you have two minutes left. Good evening, everyone. Valentina, I am guessing you have given me a go ahead to make the presentation. Yes, okay. Thank you so much. Namaste, everyone. My name is Swati. Right now it's right now from India. It's 745 here. And good morning, good afternoon from wherever you are in whichever part of the world. Thank you so much for inviting us for making this presentation. The next 10, 15 minutes, I would focus on ensuring that, yeah. So the next 10 to 15 minutes would be dedicated on seeing that there is a hope still remaining regarding food systems and agroecology. I've always seen that agroecology has been around for a century or more. And if it is so good, why hasn't it scaled up? One question has been to critique agroecology has been that is it a niche farming? Is it only restricted to small geographical area? Is it only to be done in small silos? Let me look at agroecology from scale perspective. And I'm bringing an example from the state of Andhra Pradesh, where we are talking about a government program, a government initiative that has been taken to convert the entire state into natural farming, which we are saying as agroecology. So before that, I'm just wanting to lay context. I am in Asia right now. I have colleagues from Africa or then you all, many of them are from South America. While we are divided by continents, we are united by one important element of climate change. We are united by the farm crisis. We are united by the food growers, the food producers who are going almost if not the same problems. The problem is that farming is in distress. Food systems have fractured, especially after a post-COVID world. And a bigger virus is of climate emergency. And we are feeling the impacts of it. We can see the climate change. We can see the crop variation. We can see that the drought in rainy seasons, rains in drought seasons. We are looking at food scarcity and this all immediately is attributable to the farming that we have done till now. The last 50, 60 years is when we jeopardized the entire farming and food systems. And now is the time that we are talking about that how do we address this crisis? Because these all crises are interlinked. So climate change cannot be looked in isolation. Food crisis or farm distress cannot be looked in isolation because all these are interlinked. And that is the context that we all are united today. We are here talking about an example from Asia that the problems I'm very sure that the farm families in South America are facing is similar to a small marginal landholder in Asia and India. So this is the context. This is what's happening. So now while the problem exists, we have to talk about solutions and that is why we are here. So before going through the solution, we need to really understand we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that we used to create in them. And that is where the beauty of agroecology comes into picture. That it's diverse. It is heterogeneous and it offers a solution while it is similar, but it's not the same. It contextualizes with itself and that is in this contextualization of agroecology. I'm talking about Andhra Pradesh where you can see the country of India and then the red mark state is the state of Andhra Pradesh. When I mention a state, it's basically a province. So India is divided into 29 provinces. So for your understanding, you can consider Andhra Pradesh as a province. Now, obviously, agroecology will be interpreted in different ways. And I'm sure we have all been part of debates. What is the definition of agroecology? Why who should do it? What is comprises of agroecology? What our understanding or interpretation is that we want to mimic nature. We realize that you cannot go beyond nature and put something externally available inputs into the soil, into the village. The context completely differs. So something which is produced in a factory elsewhere in some northern part of India cannot be utilized or put and refurbished the soil in southern part of India. So what we are saying that the universal, that we need to mimic nature and we need to harness the power of photosynthesis. And we need to talk about building soil health. We need to fix the carbon cycle. We need to fix the water cycles. We need to have crop resilience in a world of climate change. And what we say is that when, if I am talking about natural farming the next 5-10 minutes, I'm talking about agroecology, which natural farming falls under the larger umbrella of agroecology. The principles are universal. I'm very sure whatever is on the right side of the screen is something which we all have inherited. We are talking about diversity of crops. We are talking about diversity of seeds. We are talking about integrating animals into farming, minimum disturbance of soil. And one of the biggest non-negotiable is we are shunning the use of BD side, fertilizer, herbicide, pesticide. So anything which is chemically grown, which falls under the paradigm of brain revolution, we are encouraging and motivating farmers to shun those practices and mimic nature. So these are the principles. This is the knowledge that exists. Now, what we have, what, what is happening with this knowledge? So this knowledge, which is there on your screen is, is now another problem is how do we take this knowledge? The big problem of agroecology, what we have seen is that we focus on the knowledge. We focus on the small elements of science. We focus on, you know, which bio stimulant or bio, you know, what, should we use a cow dung, should we use manure, should we use vermicompost rather than talking that how do we take this knowledge to communities? To more farmers or farm families and food growers. This is what we in Andhra Pradesh, where we claim to be the largest agroecological program in the world have been trying to solve. This is the scale. This is what can happen in the last five years, six years of a state, a small state in India. I am talking today of 850,000 farmers or farm families in natural farming. And then we are talking about a million farmers by next year. So if you're seeing that scale as an element, when I talk about scale, I am talking about more number of farmers, more farms, more package of practices that come under the purview of agroecology and natural farming. And we cannot look at scale only with respect to numbers. We need to also look at it with respect to the farms that are being practiced upon. So if you can see, this is what is the picture today of Andhra Pradesh. Now, I will focus on how we have been able to achieve this. See, when I started my presentation, I said that knowledge cannot be looked at into in isolation. What is the focus of this government program? And this is where we excel and thrive is that we focus more on taking it to the communities. I think we leave to the wisdom of communities that the knowledge will reach them automatically.  They kept small farm families out of focus. What APCNF program as a natural farming government program we are wanting to actually basically acknowledge is that knowledge needs to be with the community and their wisdom needs to be incorporated. We cannot talk about a world in future that we actually are ignoring the communities and the knowledge. And this is the reason the agroecology needs to be integrated with farm families and their communities. Andhra Pradesh offered this advantage because there is a huge push of capital with respect to the different political groups. The biggest learning is you want to take away from my presentation as I am going to move further is that you have to be bringing people together to solve the majority of problems. You are joining, collectivizing or bring people together to solve an issue is of critical.  Now what we are doing is I am a development professional but who will take this farmer or knowledge is Swati cannot take this knowledge to a farmer. It is only a farmer who has done natural farming, who is doing natural farming, who is doing agroecology on a daily basis needs to talk to another farmer that see I have done farming, I have done agroecological farming, natural farming. I benefited from this you should also do it. So the trust building mechanism is much higher rather than somebody who do not belong to the village, who is somebody from outside who just comes and give one day or two day of training and say and say you know you should do this. Training of one day, two day or a week will not bring any change you need to invest into local champions who will be there with the community and talk about transformation or transitioning to natural farming to agroecology. Please bear in mind there are a lot of training centers giving three days, four days, five days of training will not help. We are talking about building capacities, we are talking about building more champion farmers who stay with the communities and who solve their problems. So this is where the farmer are the heroes of the program of ours. Now while farmers are there, we need to facilitate this and that is where you know the technology or digital mediums comes into picture. So we are talking about mobile phones and in India especially the penetration of mobile or smartphones have been incredible. So we use this available technology with respect to our training capacity building with respect to our monitoring, we respect to our data collection, data management, videos you know whatever you can think of that is required for dissemination of knowledge. Technology is a major, major facilitating agency. This is a very crucial slide. What we are wanting to say is that to change one farmer, to change one farmer from not practicing chemical farming or conventional farming and to transition to agroecology to transition to natural farming, you need to change the entire village. And that is where the systems element of into comes that saturation approach comes that you need to focus on transforming all farmers in a gradual and placed manner into natural farming.  We are saying in a village, we only focus on 10 to 15%. These are enthusiastic farmers who come and say, yes, yes, I will take the risk. These risk takers becomes the first change agent because they practice for a year. Then, you know, second year we said, okay, the trust building among the farmers also start developing. So you're talking about 35 to 50%. And it takes five years. There is no magical bond which can transform the world into agroecology. You have to invest. So it takes five to eight years to transform a village of 500 farm families to natural farming to agroecology. So I request you all to have that faith and give agroecology the time for transformation. So this all is not happening in isolation.  They say they're in evidence. And as a government program, we believe that developing the science of natural farming and agroecology solution we do not want to associate anecdotal stigma to agroecology. It's a science. It's a rigorous science. And we have national and international big names that are associated to develop this science and research element. And mind you all, we are not the only condition for our sciences that we will do all the research with our actual practicing communities. Research cannot happen in laboratories, you know, in a closed manner. It should happen within the communities. It should happen with the community. So science is a first precursor for the knowledge. So we are developing science. We are developing evidence. We want to talk about soil. We want to talk about crop diversity, seed diversity. We want to talk about, you know, the economic impact, the yield and all of that is being taken by the research that has been conducted in the program. So this was a snapshot of what a scale program or what agroecology as a potential can hold. And what I want to end with is that we do not inherit the earth from our ancestor. We borrow it from our children. So what we need to do is we need to start acting. We need to stop fighting among ourselves with the definitions of agroecology, which is very prominent.  We should be talking about the solution and the bigger principles and bring a transformation change. So I hope I was able to give you a slice of what we are doing. There is much more that's happening in India. Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to showcase our work. Back to you, Valentino. Thank you very much for that excellent presentation for inspiring words and facts that you shared with us today. Thank you very, very much. I would like to thank you for your excellent presentation and for sharing with us the agricultural concepts and insights. And also, because you have addressed what we need to address. And of course, the focus must always be in the community and the work with small farmers with family farming. And with the people who at the end of the day will be the ones that will be leading this work. But thank you so much for that. Anyone who wants you to ask a question or wants to learn more about this, we will have time at the end of the meeting where we will be able to discuss this at the end. Without further ado, we will move now on to presentation by Arthur Zogan from logo Africa. Go ahead, please. You have 15 minutes. I hope everyone can hear me clearly. My name is Arthur Zogan. I come from Togo. And I'm the executive secretary of the Togo, which is the coordination of Togo of the Farmer Association in Agricultural Products Land, the permanent secretary of the Aspire, is the agricultural platform in our country. I would like to share the experience of Togo with the evolution of the last decades and how we have evolved and how we have developed our new ecological practices. My presentation will be focused on six points. The first of which is speaking a little bit about Togo and Pinafat. And then I'll talk about the challenges of family farming. And then I will talk about how agriecology is taken as a strategy to be able to face agri-food systems in our countries. And then I will talk about an initiative that we have developed and that we are using currently. And what the recommendations are that we think are necessary to be able to improve agriecology and family farming in agri-food systems. Togo, as you can see, is a small African country located in the west of Africa. It's part of five large regions of the African continent. It is part of western Africa. And it has 56,600 square meters. Its population is 8.1 million inhabitants, 51 of which are women. And the population is mostly rural. 60% lives in rural areas. And this population, basically, the livelihood is farming. And family labor is the main activity, of course, in our country. And what is practice is family farming. Family farming, there are two cooperatives. And from 2001, this is the national platform, World Work. So this system is the one that creates all the different networks for family players. So this is a federation where we have family farmers, which are part of these networks. So in 2013, the networks of agriculture in the civil society implemented together in 2013 this national system, which is called the PNA-PFAT, to promote family farming in El Togo. So starting from there, we have 30 organizations approximately, which are part of these networks. We have organizations of producers, even organizations of young people and women. We also have non-governmental networks of NGOs. We also have training sectors and research. So these are the organizations, which are 30 approximately, which are organized together to implement the PNA-FAT, to promote family farming, because 95% of them are family farmers. So since we implemented this organization, this network, it consolidated with some other organizations. For instance, they have a coordination office, a permanent secretary of this platform, and some different groups, theme groups, and some of them work on the land or other agricultural funding of different topics. They also focus on the ends of agriculture. So they normally try to discuss topics that are key to us, to analyze the proposals of this network as part of the different programs implemented by our states. Since then, we've been working on different areas. For instance, the involvement of the global governance of the agricultural sector. We also work to make contributions to the agricultural activity of Togo from 2016-2030. We've also been working next to the state to build a bill on agricultural guidance. We're also working on the preparation of a plan to promote farming, which was led by the PNA-FAT with the participation of all the different entities from the state. This was a very participatory process, and it took approximately a year when it comes up from all the different sectors. We had dialogue sessions with the authorities to produce a national plan to promote family farming with seven pillars. We've also contributed with the elaboration of a national strategy to develop a agroecology in Togo. We also worked to strengthen the involvement of family farmers to implement these agropoles, which are development instances that we wanted to implement in different areas in order to favor this. We had to work so that the family activity was respected. Today, the PNA-FAT is centralized, and it is in the different five regions with the implementation of regional platforms. As for the food system in Togo, we have some challenges that are not just for Togo, but also challenges that we're going to find in most of African countries. For instance, the low productivity, the high cost of agricultural products, particularly after the energy crisis, and we're also related to water issues, water management. In Togo, less than 5% of the lands are irrigated, so agricultural activity relies on or is affected by climate change. There is also an impact because of climate change, specifically. We have a very weak automation system. We have very poor financing system. We have credits that have 30-40% of interest rate, and they haven't been adapted. We also are lacking a quality infrastructure. The systems are in poor conditions. We do not have a reservation system for food. This is a little bit of the context where the family activity has to face. Despite all of these different challenges, 95% is done by families. This is the main way in which we affect the food system. This activity covers the needs of the different consumers when it comes to cereals, for instance, and this contributes. We have some deficit in the area of production. This is not a country that produces meat, so we also have some problems in that area. Now, this agriculture creates employment, and it preserves biodiversity, preserves our cultural identity. We always have activities that are related to our culture in our country, so it's very resilient and it's resistant to climate shocks, for instance, and the crisis of COVID, for instance. The family farmers of Togo manage to place products in the market to feed the population. So today, agriculture in Togo has been recognized as a strategy to be able to face different challenges in terms of resilience when it comes to food systems. The different challenges that we've covered, such as the water issues, for instance, the issue of climate change. Today, agriculture is recognized as one of the main strategies to face the food issues. In Togo, specifically, we have a program, the regional program, to support the farming transition in the West. So this program was developed by the Western Africa, and Togo is very much committed to this program. In Togo, we are trying to develop a national strategy for the development of agriculture. And today, we have a national framework about agriculture, which is an instance which has been implemented by the government, which groups all the different state and non-state stakeholders to exchange ideas about a strategy about the procedures that need to be implemented to promote the agricultural transition. Currently, the country is preparing an action plan, a letter about this framework. I would also like to highlight that agroecology is part of our strategies, and we have a national program that was launched last year with the food systems in Togo. This is a five-year program to strengthen the resilience of the food system. In this case, we have agroecology. So in the area, in the case of family farmers, they work with different networks to develop different initiatives to promote agroecology. And one of these initiatives is going to be shared with you. So when we consider all of these elements, we can clearly see that the country is committed to agroecology and the role of family farming is strengthened as part of this agroecology transition, particularly to produce quality food in good quantities, to promote good practices, to preserve the resources and to respect the environment. So we've worked in a model to promote agroecology. This model is based on agroecological practices through all the family farming which has been developed by farmers. This initiative started in 2019 with different agricultural schools, particularly young people that were part of this network, and they strengthened the different capacities about the techniques and these schools, these schools today are 15. So every year we select some people to be trained in these farming schools during 15 days. So since 2019, as a result of this initiative, which was created by farmers, we've trained 3,360 youngsters and everything related to agroecology and agroecological practice. So today, the seed top plays a key role to promote agroecology and we've capitalized all of these practices that we've implemented with the government. The government is committed towards agroecology and we've started working on this initiative, as I said in 2019, with FAO as part of family farming and we are working also with the World Bank and the state as part of a program. So this is how starting this year that we've been working on an indigenous initiative and we are capitalizing and valuing the policies and the different programs at the national level so that the state can... It's no longer skeptical in regards to agroecological practices so that they can participate in the production and they can create some legal instances so as to promote this activity based on state programs so that these initiatives are considered more seriously. So this year we started working with the World Bank to work on these different programs. So here you can see some young people who are being trained on agroecological practices. These are young people who know how to produce some agricultural inputs. These are different practices, different training sessions. So all of these works that we implemented have given us some interesting perspectives in order to scale them with the support of the gas and we have some funds given to the CETOP to promote this agroecological area. We're going to work with more than 5,000 farms and we have the support from the production units so that agriculture can be promoted in the entire territory. We are trying to convince the state that there are more than 25 agricultural zones to do this. We want to promote the agroecological practices. These are huge areas of 5 hectares or more that are working with agriculture. So these are initiatives that are working at a large scale with these agricultural schools. And starting in 2024 we're going to identify the capacities of these schools and we want to work together with them. So in terms of recommendations about what we have, we think that for agriculture to be part of family farming and in the agricultural food systems, of course we need to work in the market of the agroecology products. And it's important to know how to work in these markets to strengthen family farming so that there is a commitment towards agriculture. We are also thinking that it's very important to develop knowledge and to understand the impact of agroecology in the quality and quantity of food. And we also need to train producers more on these agroecological practices. And we want to solve all of these issues. We think that agroecology in the context of climate crisis is considered as the strategy of the universe of family farming. Oh my dear participants, this is what I wanted to share with you. So thank you for your attention. Thank you so much for your excellent presentation. It's very concise. And so we are applying this program for family farming. And countries such as Togo are participating and they have been holding meetings for several years already. It's part of the 10 year plan for the decade of family farming. And it's very important to see how as part of this movement, the focus on agroecology is so important. And it's very strategic for the decade of family farming and for agri-food systems and the challenges that are faced by countries such as Togo. So thank you for your presentation. We already have some questions for the panel members, but we will leave the Q&A session for the end of the presentation. So thank you very much. I would like to remind our participants that we have simultaneous interpretation. You can find that at the bottom of your screen to choose the language of your preference. And the session is being recorded. We will move on to the next presentation by Unai Aragudin, who will be speaking about the experience from Spain. Unai, you have 15 minutes. Good afternoon. I come from the vast country between Spain and France in the European continent. It's a highly industrialized and urbanized continent where actually pests form a very small part of the population. And it's of course a very old practice type of setting. There are no new generations that want to go to family farming. So I would like to share an experience of how we are training and we have been training for the last 25 years, young people, so that we can go back to the farm in general in Europe. The evolution of the agro-agri-food system has been based on having local agri-food systems by region or by district. We have gone to the globalization and industrialization of the farm. So now we are part of the global system of food distribution and raw material distribution, where there's been a great loss of sovereignty. Of course, the farmers now depend a lot more on those global processes. They have no control over their own practices and they can't control the practices either. The consumers feel that they can choose the type of food they want to eat, but then they find that those food items are actually made with foodstuffs from different parts of the world. Since we're part of the Quesad community and we wanted to see how we could approach this, we're looking for a more fair and sustainable farming system. And that's why we talked about food sovereignty. And we tried to implement it in our region, trying to reconstruct a food system that is more local and that is more fair and sustainable. And in doing so, we saw that the main gap that we had was that we were lacking in farmers. We, of course, didn't have any more present communities of members willing to do farming. So we actually proposed a strategy where we tried to do training in agro-ecology. At a time when most of the political and public organizations were actually working on mono crops or single crops and intensive farming, we were actually doing the opposite, natural farming, because agriculture wasn't known as the term back then. And then we began to talk about ecological agriculture, because of course in Europe they began to ban artificial chemicals and methods. But we now call the type of farming agro-ecology. It's not a science or a production system. It's actually a transformation process, a collective one that looks at the farm and the conflict and also the economic fall. 25 years ago, we began to look at the cities. Of course, farms were running out of farm hands because people were moving to cities. There was high diversity of crops, cattle farming, chickens, and also just beef in the beef industry. But now we, of course, have livestock and farmers that are working with very intensive methods. And when we try to move on to a more local model, we actually try to draw people from the cities, the ones who have left the farms. So we started a program, that was a three month program, twice a week, with more general criteria being offered, different principles and just to talk about the fundamentals of the model and explaining what model we were looking for. And then we also talked about techniques and practices. So the first workshop was very successful. Many people signed up for it. And for the last 25 years, we have been offering those workshops, depending on the demand, of course, and many people have gone through them. We have managed to draw many people from the rural sector to those workshops, competing many times with the industry that offers much better working conditions. They paid more for people to work with. And so our training program was focused on the peasants, on the farmers who wanted to transform their systems. And also we were focused on people who had small plots of land and wanted to have just subsistence farming for their own use. So we tried to work on that actually with those two groups of people. And also for people who wanted to actually use those products like the consumers. It's when we talk about food sovereignty or the reconstruction of food systems, the consumers who have been to our workshops understand those criteria and shop according to them. So we have made a great effort to do these programs free, accessible to all the population. And one of the essential elements have been that we have deviated from that that have always been part of our ecology. You know, perma farming, biodynamics, all things went to the same core that involves being more respectful of the land, soil and the people. And so in the last decade, we have made changes in our workshops. And now we have had two programs that have been aimed only at women and also have been delivered by women. So we have created very nice instances where some women farmers, some non-farmers have been able to speak about their daily activities, their concerns, and the way they handle their farms. And now they have been requesting a second cycle of those workshops. So we think that that new dimension has been quite interesting. We've also had training processes for different organizations, stakeholders bringing them together on weekends and they have been quite successful. So the challenges that we face in the future. Well, it's clear that in Europe we need more farmers. And we need to access more assets. Owning land in Europe is very difficult. You're competing in the industry, organizations and large infrastructure projects. So it's very difficult to access soil, land, seeds and water. We need to have public policies that support such processes. First of all, in the Basque, in the Basque country, 40% of what is consumed were produced locally. Even in people who were free and their farms would be 500%. So with one single public policy, we could change our adequate systems. The thing that we have been doing and we've been able to disseminate is the agroecological model. We're creating agroecological masks. But for us what is key in Europe is to try to feed the whole population. Many times, the food distribution system at a global level, offers ecological or healthy food stuffs or anything that can actually afford such products. So we want to move away from that and we want to promote access to most of the population to sustainable, healthy food items. So we want to have agroecological models that are accessible to all the population right now that is very difficult. Right now, because we have the social energy and climate crisis, of course, the privileged are the ones that can access those foods and the other privileged populations are eating unhealthy food. So we want to have more autonomous farming with more inputs so that they can regulate their prices and they can actually reach the whole population. Because if we do agroecology, buying all the raw materials, it can be done. But for us, agroecology is a process that seems to be growingly autonomous and fertilized. There's few costs in many different aspects. So to try to spend less on the inputs and to try not to have patents and licenses to just move away from that. And to wrap up, I would like to say that 25 years after we started this program, we have found that our purpose is clear now. It involves, of course, the reconstruction of this whole agroecology system. We have laid the foundations for this. And we see that the population is understanding that food is a right and that we can't leave in the hands of farmers that responsibility. It's actually the whole of society's responsibility to fight for that water and feed. And to generate the critical mass to help agroecology provide sustainable and healthy food for the whole population, not only in the European continent but the whole world. So I would like to thank you for listening and I would also encourage those who are listening to participate and ask different questions if they wish. Thank you so much and I for the experience that you have shared. It's been very inspiring. And also, I would like to thank you for actually highlighting the role of women and youth in this transformative process. And of course, we know that the permanence and entry of young people in agroecology systems is key for sustainability. And also for the livelihoods in rural areas. So that of course offers a key element for that to actually link agroecology and everything else has to do with their capacity building, which is a very important approach. So thank you for the work that you're doing and for actually inviting everyone to actually enjoy that effort. So, we have several questions in the chat. And after this presentation that we will now see, we will again talk to our four panelists. We have one last presentation by Ileana de Brady, who will be talking about the dances in agroecology. Ileana, go ahead please. Good afternoon everyone. Good morning. The head of the Family Farming Participation and Parliamentary Networks Unit at FAO. This unit is in charge of giving technical support to implement the UNDFF and I would like to share with you a presentation. I would like to start to mention the need of having public policies for transformation and changes and to scale sustainable practices. So I think that the core of my presentation is to discuss how we can foster regulatory frameworks, legal frameworks in different countries so as to promote agroecology. So I would like to share with you the importance of working with the parliamentary sector, not just the government, and the support that FAO offers in this field. We know how we work together with Parlatino, which is the Latin American parliament that involves countries of Latin America, and also the origin of that demand to build a proposal about agroecology. We are also going to be talking about the construction process of this proposal and a link between family farming of the UNDFF and agroecology, which I think is quite natural. So on behalf of a multidisciplinary team from FAO, we work from this unit together with the agroecology teams and the legal department of FAO and the regional office for Latin America to support this initiative along with Parlatino. So I would like to start by saying why is it so important to work with the members of parliament in order to make progress on proper food systems. There are four areas which are key for them. These are, they don't really get too much attention from the corporation agency of the United Nations. In general, these areas are worked by governments, but it's also important to work with parliamentary members so that they can pass the laws and the legal frameworks. With all of these proposals that are developed together, they need to be approved by Congress. So for instance, to have budget, which normally is the task of the legislative role. So these supports in political transition process are always underway. So maintaining this topic in the agenda is the high priority for society of a government. So it's also played an important role, the level of priority that Congress gives to these different topics. So it is not to redo things again about different topics so we can have a better transition and maintain this topic in the agenda. They also have a provision role, an oversight role, the different policies that are being executed, whether the allocation of resources is actually happening and on top of the the, to represent and connect with different types of members of the country, citizens. So this is why the FAO has been working for many years with the parliaments all over the world and we've been supporting different topics. I mean, we promote the exchange of information, good practices by identifying the good practices, the good legislative practices. For instance, recently we've been analyzing and identifying the practices, the certification practices in terms of the information provided to the consumer about the nutritional characteristics of food or seals that can provide some direct visual information to consumers in terms of what they are eating. So on the one hand we support this exchange, so we help different parliaments working together and we also technically support the elaboration of bills to include elements to better construct some public policies and laws, which is for instance what we are doing with the framework and act about agriculture. Sometimes even training parliamentary members so that they can better understand the different dimensions and they can include these components when discussing different bills or policies. And also by facilitating the creation of links, relationships and partnerships between parliamentarians and parliamentary bodies. Now there's something that's very particular, which are different parliamentary fronts against hunger and malnutrition. So maybe some of you have already heard about this. So there are different parliamentary fronts, which started working on this in Latin America, but it was then extended in different regions. So the idea is to bring parliamentaries from different political bodies to work together on different topics related to food, safety and nutrition so that countries can have better frameworks, regulatory frameworks. About different topics related to family farming. Just completed a world summit with about hunger and malnutrition in Chile in June in the city of Valparaíso. So we are adding more dimensions to these discussions so that parliamentary members can work on better frameworks, legal frameworks. So based on this effort, we also work with the Latin American and Caribbean parliamentarians on also different national parliamentary fronts. Every year wants to work with the parliament, regional parliamentary bodies. So we also have the Pan-African parliament and there are some entities also in Asia that are being created on in the Middle East for instance. So we are also trying to create a specific agenda with this space because the experience with parliament has helped us to create these results. We are working on this role to model what we're doing in agriculture that we have been working together with other framework legislation programs at Latin American level because direct implications on national parliament. They act as a reference point and we work in the past with a model of family agriculture at Palatino. Different parliament use that role as a reference point to then have their own legislation. So there is a broad nutritional uncertainty about climate change for instance, so sustainable food systems and now we are developing this proposal to be considered by Palatino about the model act in agriculture. So it would be cutting edge regulation because it would contribute to the redesign of the food systems and it would help us coordinate different areas under just one legislation. It would also be useful to support different countries about agriculture in the region. Some certain that this will also is going to create, be attracted by different regions. So we've been working on this since 2020, so 2021 with Palatino. This was analysed and studied in terms of why creating regulations for agriculture and how this can have an impact on food systems. And based on that debate with Palatino, we were asked to create a bill. So that's the purpose to create a bill about agriculture. And based on that request, we've been working on three phases. During that year we had three public consultations covering the regions of Central America, Caribbean and Latin America. And we systematised the results of that survey. And now we are preparing a bill on agriculture, which is going to be reviewed by the Palatino November. Great thing is moving forward as expected. So I would like to give you some highlights in terms of the consultations, the consultation process, of course the regional approach, the connection between the urban and rural areas, the role of youngster, the role of women and the role of indigenous communities, for instance, are things that are the highlights. So based on that consultation, we structure a framework of key aspects that the law needs to cover. So I mean, there is an area that is common for different legislations, but some other are quite specific. So it's interesting to see that there is an area about the registration system of agricultural products, monitoring our surveillance systems, some areas related to science, technology, education, participation, culture, tradition, financial resources, for instance, some emergency situations and other aspects. And to close, I would like to talk about that connection between agriculture and this bill. I think that almost 100% of farmers who practice family farmers, so this is an expectation or it's a dimension, a vision of sustainability transformation. And what it's important is how our ecology contributes to the different pillars of the global action plan of the 10-year plan of the UNDFFs. So we have a plan for a 10-year period from 2019 to 2020 so that we have seven pillars and agriculture covers almost all of them. So we are working to create a political environment to strengthen family farming, that's pillar one, pillar two is for young people, pillar three is gender equality leadership of women. We know about the role of youngsters and women in agriculture. And based on the presentations of the previous speakers, we've noticed how the investment on training when it comes to agriculture, there are several experiences related to agricultural schools and about the exchange between farmers. So this is a process that is part of the different organizations. So it connects with pillar four of the 10-year plan. So this is also a system that can focus on social and economic inclusion. So by working with what you have available in nature and it connects with pillar six and seven, which are those connected to the environment, agenda, biodiversity, culture and territorial development and social innovation. So to us, it's very important. So as we support the implementation of the UNDFF as supporting the countries so as to implement national plans related to family farming so that they can also see there's some components to promote agriculture as part of their national plans and use as a reference a law about agriphology that can inspire them and guide them to think whether the legal frameworks are appropriate to promote agriphology. So I'm sure this is going to be very helpful. So I would like to thank you and I'm here for any questions you may have. Thank you. Thank you Guillermit for that excellent presentation. It's important to have guidelines and frameworks. And that's something that we actually addressed in the previous session of this dialogue series. And this of course will help in that work, especially in the country's region and globally also. So thank you so much for sharing. Now we have 15 minutes for questions and also for any comments. There are many in the chat. So we have been looking at them with the team. So we will offer the floor first to those of you who have raised your hand. And then we will ask a question to four panel members. Please feel free to answer the questions according to what point you want to prioritize related to your work. And then if you want to offer any closing remarks with regard to the presentation that we have had today, you can do so. Please anyone speaking please address the question to the person you want to answer the question and please introduce yourselves briefly. So we have Emilia first go ahead Emilia. Emilia you can ask your question go ahead please. Emilia I think you have to turn on your microphone and mute your microphone please. Good afternoon everyone we had a small technical problem but Valentina will be back with us in a few minutes. We were providing, we were going to hear what Emilia would like to say but he was unable to unmute his phone. So Malik so your hand has been raised so Malik go ahead and ask your question please. Thank you I would like to thank FAO for the opportunity to actually be a super practice. My name is Malik so I am from Senegal and I am a member. And at the same time I am also a member of the CASO WA team and I am also part of the team that now takes scientific knowledge as part of that same project. There are many topics that I have actually found very interesting and I think that persons are usually exploring their territory they are always trying to look for options. I actually did some research and everything that I have heard here of cases and what they do and you know they have a lot of wisdom to share. So they can be part of actually tackling their own problems. In Senegal for instance the persons actually use many terms without a scientific perhaps explanation but they might say well you can't transplant a woman cannot transplant peppers or tomatoes if they are with their menstrual period if they are menstruating. And sometimes they say that the pepper lets us dislike people to look at it. So sometimes they talk about these concepts without a scientific background. And from that point of view we can see that everything that farmers say makes a lot of sense but it is usually ignored by science. I think it would be actually advisable for us to be able to hear what the farmers want me to have to say and to look at what they are doing because what they say and what they are doing there is a scientific background to that. For instance once farmers say that pepper plants don't like people to look at them what does that mean? Well now we have realized that in an agricultural field the plant when it is discovered it becomes dehydrated and the leaves fall off. So what the piss center farmers think is that by looking at it we have done that and sometimes they see that everything is okay and that's because the one is looking at the plant. So the explanation of the farmer is that the eyes of the person are the ones that cause the plant to lose its leaves. But actually it's the pressure of the wind that does that. So these are all coherent items that farmers share. There's always an explanation for what they actually observe. So with this I leave you and I was very happy to be part of this meeting and I would like to continue sharing with you. Thank you so much for your intervention. Now we will continue with other comments because it's such an interesting discussion. So we'll offer the floor to two more people and then we will hear what the panel members want to say. If anyone has any problems, time constraints just let us know. Now I would like to offer the floor to Adrienne. The floor is yours. Please ask your question. Hello, good morning, my name is Adrienne. I'm from Mexico and I would like to know how you can reduce microplastics especially in family farming. How can you reduce microplastics? So thank you for your question. We have taken note of it for the panel members to ask for it later. And so now we will offer the floor to somebody else. Good morning, everyone. My name is Curly. I'm a student of agroecology. I come from Ecuador. My question is focused on agroecology because I'm a student of that. I would like to know how the organizations like SAO encourage agroecology students to actually mix academic knowledge in what we know of family farming because some people of course are interested in agroecology because of ambition, others because it's bad. And there are other people that just like myself come from farmers. And we know the farms and the communities. So the question is how FAO can intervene in that so that we can leave aside bad and ambition and can focus on the importance of food security and food sovereignty. Thank you Curly for your question. And we are very happy to hear that young people such as yourself are taking part in a meeting such as this one. So thank you so much, Curly. Now the panel members, there are several questions in the chat to sum up. And I apologize if I am leaving anything out for the four panel members. Can you please start answering the questions and talking about the comments of the people who have just spoken and to talk about the cost for small farmers when it comes to adopting agroecological practices and what are the impacts of that transition of agroecology in rural areas and what is the role of governments in civil society when it comes to driving that transition. So this is for the four panel members. You can pick and choose the most important aspects of those questions and to tell us what you think about them. Yeah, so very interesting question on the role of governments, the role of civil society. So in the context of India and I'm sure you can also look at it from the context of your regions. What we have realized is scaling is job of the government.  The dialogues at the political level stops, especially for agroecology stops at policy. We need to talk beyond policy and talk about how government can become implementing or promote agroecology rather than just talking about, you know, we assume that policy is the last bid of transformation or the change. But the idea is that implementation of those policies, implementation of programs, looking at it from, so the scaling aspect is government's job. Civil societies and NGOs, they should focus on developing the knowledge and the champion farmers and the models and micro models that are required to scale up. So they should be especially NGOs and civil society. They should not focus on scaling. Scaling is not job. What we realize in India, our experience is civil society should not bother about more farmers. They should work, say with 100 farmers, but demonstrate that, you know, with 100 farmers, this is doable. Let's do it with 1000. Now, for doing the 1000, it's the job of the government, of the local bodies, of community, larger communities, not job, is what we realize the job of civil societies should be. They should focus on those. So I would like to address these two elements. I believe governments, and that is the reason we want more governments, policymakers, politicians of whatever category, the Democratic Republic, I don't know. I mean, in India context, we have the right wing, the left wing, whatever. We need to bring them on board because everybody eats food in spite of their orientation. So I think it's very crucial that discussion. So I'll leave to other panel members to address other. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Now we will move on to the next panel member. Arthur, if you want to actually talk about any of the comments and questions. I don't know. I think that we've talked about the role of FAO. Well, in Togo, I think FAO was the one that triggered the process. Perhaps that much has been done with the state. But in the case of Togo, we are lucky to have a program that FAO can have direct influence in working with civil society and persons. And thanks to that program, we have been able to put together actions, training in agriculture, and we were able to harness all that. So that this practice can be considered by the state. I think that if in other countries, specific programs such as the one we have would be deployed, it would really be helpful. I think that we have actually tried to engage the state because sometimes the state is more interested in chemical products. And of course, there's a lot of vested interest in that. And civil society can and should make requests so that the state can be involved in agriculture. So thank you so much. I would like to thank you for having included me in this panel. It was a great pleasure for me and I was able to see and understand what is going on in other areas. And also to learn about the dynamics when it comes to the parliament. At the African level, we don't have that yet. But I think that we will exchange information regionally on that to see how this parliament type of program can be used to help agricultural practices and policies. Thank you Artur for your comments. Now I would like to give the floor to Unai. You have a few minutes. Thank you. I'm going to try and answer some of the questions by making a, maybe some final remarks. I mean, how we can stop depending on microplastic in a society that is completely dependent on oil. And I think that this is a general confection we need to make as a society. And of course we need to move towards more sustainable models. And as part of these more sustainable models, we can have different partnerships, particularly with NGOs. I think that the role of NGOs is important, provided that they don't appropriate the voice of farmers. And sometimes the priorities and needs are different, but they are certainly important, they play an important role. We also have the academia and many contents and many knowledge comes from the country. And the academia allows us to systematize this knowledge. But this should be a joint effort. Sometimes the academia doesn't want to understand the sentimental part related to the knowledge coming from the rural areas. We feel bad because it doesn't rain for instance. And then I would like to think about the public policies. Sometimes we forget that we have policies locally. Different municipalities have tools to implement some processes. Particularly if these are strategic, not in the short term, so that they can also have some political support. And something that's very common in Europe. It's the cultural shock between the cities and the rural areas. The rural areas designed to feed cities and to provide energy to cities. So sometimes we have cultural shock because in the rural area we feel threatened by wind farms, by solar panels, and a lot of infrastructure that are used to feed cities. So we need to have an alliance, a cultural alliance, rather than a cultural shock. Thank you, Unai, for your comments. Now to finish, I would like to give the floor to Guillerme, who would like to cover some of the questions, or maybe give some closing remarks. Thank you, Valentina. I think that there is a specific question about the process of the analysis and approval of regulatory frameworks. FAO presents a bill to Palatino. And we are including this topic to be discussed early in 2024. So the analysis process or the discussion process of Palatino should start in the first semester of 2024. Then we don't control those processes, those internal processes. So we don't know exactly when this discussion process would be completed, but in terms of the expected results, I think that, for instance, based on other experiences of Palatino in relation to other framework rules, for instance, there is a framework from Palatino about family farming. So the structure, the criteria, et cetera. And you can see that that regulation was the inspiration for many other countries so that they could create their own national legislation. So we hope that this can foster the creation of more and better laws about agriculture in the countries of this region. Now that, of course, it's not enough on its own. And of course the governments and national states play a significant role in this regard. If the existing policies can be adapted to promote agriculture, then we need to think about the specific policies required to promote agriculture. And because we need to think about how we can better coordinate actions from different sectors of the government to foster this. Please, because a sector may foster what's the same level of practice, but then have another area of the government moving a different way. So there's need to be coordination between different ministries to promote agriculture. I think there was another question related to that about recognition and certification. I think that most of the questions related to costs imply certifying private certifications in order to have access to some niches to some markets. So maybe we could think about public certifications in broader certification systems of some criteria. That may validate publicly this to reduce their certification costs in general, the private certification costs. So I think that in some countries of the region, they already have some elements that can be part of a broader policy. There are registrations, for instance, so they could use that related to social environmental compliance. So I think that there are options that need to be explored along with other options that are not just private certifications in order to promote scale agriculture. So that is not just a niche market. Thank you, Valentina. Thank you, Guillermo. So after these final comments, we are going to close this session and I would like to thank all the participants and all of those who join us in the three sessions that we had about this topic. I would also like to thank the Brazil leadership on family farming for the support on the organization of these three sessions. And of course I would like to thank again our excellent speakers and panel members today and in the other sessions. So thank you very much. The recording is going to be available for all of you. We've already got the link to the recording in the chat. I'm going to be sharing with you more information about different initiatives in which we are working in FAO. So thank you very much and I hope you have a great rest of the day.


This is Alex Digg, regional extension agent and coordinator of the Album and Pasture Rail program. In this video you will see updates on each of the 9 loads of cattle we shipped from June through December 2019 to High Plains Feed Yard in Montezuma, Kansas. As you'll see in the videos, the pens are rather muddy due to about a half inch of ice that was received at the feed yard just days before we arrived in January the 20th of 2020, and since then they've received about another 8 inches of snow. Outside of those events though, weather conditions have been good and health has been pretty fantastic for the cattle throughout the program. This is the second half of Lot 1403. We shipped these calves out here in June. It was 78 head from Vista Farms over in Fayette County, registered Angus Outfit over there that the cattle got a lot of performance. The first half of those calves we harvested back in December. They ran a 100% choice, almost 60% certified Angus beef, 6-7% primes, less than 20% yield grade 4s and 5s. On top of that gained over four pounds a day while they were here, and I expect this younger set is going to do, the younger smaller end of that set is going to do very similar. These calves are going to go on the show list today and will be harvested sometime next week. These calves always do good. Vista's put cattle on the program for the last four years and every time their cattle grade, yield, grow, and do pretty fantastic, and I don't expect these calves to be any different. Unfortunately, we did have a little bit of a health hiccup with these cattle. About 55 or 60 days on feed, ran into a little issue there, had some problems, but they're up over that and doing well now. And then the other unfortunate side effect is these cattle shipped out here just before the Tyson Plant Burnt in Holcomb, Kansas. So from a contracting perspective, the market went wild. Any of you guys that were paying attention to the market at the time, the market went pretty crazy then. And so we're going to be real close after we contracted the cattle after the fire. We're going to have just right out of breakeven on these cattle, unfortunately. But because of the way those cattle are going to hang on the rail, they're going to hit all their group premiums, hit the CAB premiums, the prime premiums, they'll end up still doing really well and actually beating plant averages for price that day. So this is lot 1603. These would be a group of 60 head of cattle that we shipped out here in early September last year. The bigger end of the cattle, the ones that you see with the red-ear tags in their left ears, like the couple right here in front of us, those calves averaged 879 coming in. We had them at a breakeven of about $1.06 and we contracted those calves back in the fall at 115.55. The lighter end, the cattle that don't have those bright red-ear tags, those calves averaged 688. So we had a lot of variation in this pin from size on the front end, but 688, we figured them in there at a breakeven of probably about 109 to 110. And so we had those cattle contracted for a late March, early April kill with National at 118 and some change. This is one of our early groups from October, lot 1699 instead of mostly heifers from producers in Northeast Alabama and Central Alabama. There were two pins of this group. This is the heavier end, roughly 60 head or so of these calves. When they came in back October the 18th, averaged 817 pounds. Our calculated breakeven on these calves, they're going to kill mid-March to early April. The calculated breakeven on them of about $0.97 a hundred weight and we were able to get them contracted with National Beef at 122 and some change. So we're going to be able to do pretty well on these calves. Haven't had really any real health issues in this set, pretty nice set of calves all the way around. This is lot 1,767 head, mostly the lighter end of our early October shipment. One half came from several producers in Central Alabama and the other half from a bunch of producers up in Northeast Alabama. These calves showed up out here in early October. This group weighed 669 on average. They had a calculated breakeven at about $1.550 and we got these calves contracted at 122.51 with National Beef for a mid-April harvest. So again, being mostly heifers, heifers got really, really cheap in this past fall in Alabama. They didn't have a ton of value when they got shipped out here and we're going to wind up doing well. No health issues at this time, 67 head, all 67 head are alive and kicking doing well. You can hear a little bit of cough in there in the background, but nothing major. All right. So this is lot 1723, a group of 62 mixed steers and heifers that we shipped back in late October from Somerville, Alabama. These would be Mr. Doug and Rance Wiginton's cattle. We had these at a breakeven when they came in at about 123 for an April, late March, April kill. These calves weighed 851 when they showed up out here in High Plains and we were able to get them contracted with National Beef at 124.575. So usually these calves grade pretty well, do a pretty good job on yield and quality grade. So when they get on the grid, they should do really, really well. This is our late October load of Alabama pasture to rail calves, a mixed load, total of 94 calves in this group from producers from Jackson County, Coleman County, St. Clair County, down to around Prattville area, Montgomery area, kind of all over the state. You can see green tags on there would be our heavy end. Those cattle are going to sell in late March. The big end of the cattle or the smaller end of the cattle, excuse me, will be late April. Unfortunately, in this group, you can see there's lots of variation. I mean, anything from these right here that have kind of got a Holstein look to them, but a pretty barangasy type cattle. We've got Purebred Hurfords in the group, some Purebred Shorthorn, some Good Black Cattle, some Charley types that when the Packers came to look at them and wanted to give us some contracts, they were not interested in contracting these cattle at the time. They look a lot better than they did back then. But because of that, we went ahead and hedged these cattle. So the bigger end of the calves would have had about a breakeven of around $1.11. And we've got all of the cattle hedged in there at 127, around the 127 mark. The lighter end of the cattle had a little higher breakeven. I think they were 115. And we still were able to get them all hedged in there again at that 127 ballpark. So really no health issues. Again, knock on wood, hadn't lost any cattle out of this group. Nothing wrong major. So hopefully they'll do really well. What'll end up happening on that hedge is the cattle will get sold to one of the two major Packers in Dodge City more than likely when it comes time for them to kill. And then, you know, we'll take the proceeds from the hedge to add to that, but overall pretty nice. Pretty nice looking set of cattle, even though they've got a lot of color and variation in them. This is Lot 1797, it's a group of 62 head of mixed steers and heifers that were sent out here in early December, December 11th or so. These include 26 head from our Alabama junior pasture to rail program. So we've got, not 26, but 29 head of calves from six juniors across the state of Alabama. And then the balance of the load was made up by cattle from Mr. Doug and Rance Wigginton and Lake Majestic Farms, Nick Cranayis up in northeast Alabama. They helped us fill the load out and make sure our junior kids could get their calves out here. So the bigger end of the cattle, the ones you see with the bright green tags like this 90, 67 calf right here in front of us now. Those are our heavy end of the group. They were averaging up above 800 pounds when they got here back in December. Those will go on an April kill. Unfortunately, there are only 28 calves in that group, so it's not quite enough for us to get a forward contract with Cargill or National Beef. So instead those cattle have been hedged. We hedged them at about 127 and with a break even at about 105. So we've got a good bit of margin built into those already. The lighter end were more around the 680 range when they came in, 680 to 700. Those calves are a late May harvest. We did get contracts written on those with a plus one basis. So whatever the June board is when we get the price set, we'll get a dollar above that. We're working on getting those contracted actually tomorrow on Tuesday. Break even on the lighter end was at about a dollar 11 and we're trying to get them contracted at $119.50 which would put us at a net contract price of $1,250. So we'd be somewhere in the $8, $9, $100 weight profit on those calves. So very, very little health issues in this group so far. We haven't lost any of them. I don't see any snoddy noses. Nobody's in the hospital today. So calves look really, really good. This is Lot 1819. This is a group of calves from three producers in Cherokee County, northeast Alabama. You can see on some of the calves in the group, these bright green ear tags. There are 78 head in this pen. So the green ear tag cattle that have gotten the big bright green ear tags, those are going to be the heavier end. This cattle will be sorted off and sold on a June contract and the balance, the smaller end of the cattle will go on a July contract. So these calves were a little on the smaller side. The heavier end is going to average about six and a quarter where the lighter end was about 540. So we've got contracts written on these with National Beef but have not priced them yet. The smaller, the bigger end had a break even of about $1.18 a pound and the lighter end we have calculated at a break even of about $1.15 a pound which is almost exactly where the boards are running right now for those contract months. So we're kind of looking for a place to price these calves currently at a profit. This is a set of calves from the E.B. Smith Research Station in shorter Alabama that we are working on a research project with. We were evaluating, the second year we've been evaluating a couple of different backgrounding rations, looking at how those background rations affect transportation stress to feed yard and then the resulting feed yard performance and carcass performance of those calves. So these calves were shipped out here in late September and will go to harvest in the last couple of weeks of March or first week of April or so. See about half Hurford-Sired calves and half Angus-Sired calves, about 75% steers in this set.


Thank you very welcome back and that was the sound of Dolores Keynes and Tommy Sands and where have all the flowers gone. Song was written back in the 60s I suppose protesting against the war in Vietnam that Americans fought in from about 1964 to about 1973 and hundreds of thousands were killed and tonight we are reviewing The Woman written by Kristin Hannah that is set in Vietnam and it tells the story of Frankie McGraw who goes off to nurse there and joining me in the studio tonight I've got Tina Garry and Louise Flanagan just a mental block there. Liddy's you are very welcome. Thank you. Thanks Jane. So Tina it just gives a wee rundown on the storyline there. So it's an epic tale it's about Frances McGraw her family called her Frankie and she decides on a whim that she's going to go out and do service in Vietnam. She's from a very cushy well healed background. There's a lot of kind of parallels between their family and the Kennedys you know she has everything she could possibly want but she feels that there's something else out there for her. There are expectations for young women in those days where that especially for someone like Frankie that she would marry well like her mother and that there would be a path laid out for her and then her brother goes to Vietnam and her brother's friend makes a flippant remark that women can be heroes too and in her naivety she thinks that this is her calling that she needs to go to Vietnam as well but she's she's very comforted and very lacking in life experience and she soon realises that it's not going to be an easy experience for her does it without her parents knowledge she loses her or her brother into in Vietnam as well so they're horrified at the prospect of her going and we realise he has passed on page 20 so we're plunged into her grief and to her journey really really soon in the novel and then it's a case where she decides as soon as she arrives at you know I can't do this I'm not cut out for this and it's a hellish first section of the book the books in two different parts and it's punctuated then by her letters home and by her letters from her parents to her but it's an epic tale it's very gritty it's very detailed and true to form with Kristen Hannah it's very emotionally charged as well so it really does grip you and the historical accuracy with it as well is really gripping I was saying to Louise earlier I found myself slipping off to bed half seven eight o'clock just to get back into it you know it really you're you're hooked incredibly quickly and then it just it unleashes between there the novel title the women is basically about friendships that she makes when she's in Vietnam and the the sisterhood or the structural friendship that she has that keeps her from falling apart all of the times that she nearly falls apart whenever she eventually comes home and you're saying about her development as a person when she went off to Vietnam she was very very naive and when she came back as opposed to like you know she went as a was a version 21 year old she came back a woman of the world an established surgical nurse and did you find Louise that that was handled well by Kristen her development of her character I think it was yeah like as you said at the start of the story she is very very naive and she has always had such a sheltered life and Tina mentioned you know that you know her long-term expectation for her own life is to marry and to have kids and then she just gets this mad notion I suppose to go off and nurse and at the start like she is just so so naive she doesn't know what she's getting into when you know and she's so young as well and like when she arrives in Vietnam she's just thrown into the deep end there's you know a mass casualty situation and she doesn't know what to do she pretty much freezes she's like a rabbit in the headlights and after that I thought her first encounter in the your situation I think it's like her kind of her her boss basically says to her I heard you were as useful as a tiara in there you know so which I thought was kind of a funny turn of phrase so she goes from kind of being you know totally totally out of her depth you know to finding her feet and to being you know a lifesaver you know she literally saves lives over there and she does become you know very much you know self-assured and confident so when she goes back as you say she is a very different person so you do see that transition and the progress of her character from being very very naive and very unsure of herself you know to being very very competent and very relied on and very much respected by her peers in the army but then of course when she goes home she's like a scourge in society and it's about I suppose you know her struggle then of you know feeling confident and feeling proud of herself and then being exposed to so much animosity and disrespect like she literally gets spat on by several people when she comes home and she's quite confused by this because I suppose when they're over there they're quite sheltered from the reality of how people feel about the war there's a sense for a while that it's the hippies you know that have a problem with the war and you know some of the the remarks especially from her family they're very high-brow you know they'd be quite disparaging you know the old hippies you know what would they know type thing but then of course the anti-war movement becomes much more widespread and of course eventually encompasses the the veterans themselves you know in the efforts to try to stop the war so you see that entire span of her going off being so naive and so out of her depth to experiencing every you know step of that process you know towards the memorial and the eventual acceptance in America of of the atrocity and the loss of life and the devastation yeah the social realism element to it is quite clever you know there's a historical fiction as well as being you know that a wonderful piece of fiction at the same time it's historically very accurate and the representation of women in it and the change and expectations in society of what women were supposed to do and then Frankie goes down her own path and then coming back and trying to reconcile what her peers did with their lives in comparison with what she's done with hers she's fixed all of these people in Vietnam but she's returned utterly a broken and it's just about you know the expectations on women you know even there was a point where in her family home there was a hero wall where all of the men who had you know done service or who had been in the military had their you know their pictures on the wall where the females in the family their their wedding pictures were on the wall and when Frankie's father doesn't really recognize that she was one of the 11,000 women that did go to Vietnam she just she can't understand why she's not getting the same honour the same adulation as you know any other relative in the family would have gotten and the horrible irony about that is that Frankie's father herself didn't serve through some kind of technicality he didn't have to and she's really bitter that she gave up so you know so much of her life and so much of her time to do two terms of service out there but he still won't put her picture up on the wall because she's not doing what was expected of her which you know she didn't do she was told she wasn't you know following the path that had been set out for her so it's yeah it's epic it really is and I suppose it really there's she deals a lot with relationships and it was very strong throughout the book is her relationship with her father and she really wants to get his you know just his his love and affection and she wants to to make him proud of her and it has her going to Vietnam she thought she was going to do that but it had the completely opposite result yeah definitely um you know one of the recurring threads in the novel is that female trauma is not validated and her father never validates hers never validates her service either and there's this kind of you know where's my recognition and I suppose that's just symbolic of the other almost 11,000 women who had been in the same position um and and as Louise had said Hannah's very clever in her way that the novel kind of follows the journey of those women of gaining that recognition nearer the conclusion of the novel and I suppose there there are a lot of relationships Louise that there's a relationship with her parents with her mother as well and then her female friends uh Barb and Ethel and they become very close to her yeah so Barb and Ethel are two nurses who are there um a little bit before her so they're kind of used to the situation um and the trauma uh and when she arrives so when she first arrives she basically like uh she works and then she just crawls into her bed because she's exhausted and Barb and Ethel kind of pull her out of herself and they they encourage her to live while she's there as well and you know when you're reading it you know there's there's a part of me I could hardly believe it but they did smile and they did laugh and they did drink and they did dance and they did have a good time but obviously they deserved that and they needed that you know because it was kind of the only thing that could keep them on an even keel but one of the first parties that Barb and Ethel bring her to um Frankie can hear bombs dropping in the background and like the drinks are shaking and everything just with the the impact and she's obviously you know really freaked out and thinks you know we need to go to seek shelter and they say no you know just dance just try and switch off this is as good as it gets essentially so they they play a really really important role um in her in her enjoyment of a really terrible terrible situation you know there's a sense that they're all in it together but that they that they really really help each other to kind of get through um and to see the good uh in in what they can you know and I suppose in some instances to make the most of it you know um as when she's an older character you know Frankie looks back you know to her time in Vietnam to say that it was the worst memories but also the best memories of her life and those best memories are largely to do with Barb and Ethel they have a huge role to play like there's a sense that um they just they just understand the depths of each other's hearts and minds and so much doesn't even need to be said between them they would take one look at her and they would know what she needed you know if she needed a drink or if she needed a walk if she needed advice you know that they just kind of instinctively much more than the men in the story knew uh what they needed you know what each of them needed at any given moment of time and I think I've read a number of uh Kristen's books and I always found that she her descriptive technique was really good I you could feel yourself being in the hospital or in the jungle or on the helicopter did you find that Tina I thought it was very well written really vivid um well paced but like within 20 pages I I was like okay I have to put the book down I didn't want to okay I'll do I'll do a few more I'll do a few more now our structure is brilliant um there there's a section of the novel very large section of the novel that is set in Vietnam there's another section that's not I was surprised uh when the Vietnam section finished and it was like and I you know looked and it was quite a lot left and it was like oh I you know I thought historical fiction it's going to be a book about her experience in Vietnam quite a large chunk of the book is about her experience post-Vietnam and her her struggles with that um so it is it is very well paced as I'd said um already the letters home punctuate the kind of experience and the letters you know home to barb and ethyl after they finish their service and their correspondence with each other um sometimes can give an awful lot of way in what's not said um Frankie's correspondence and communication with her parents is all very you know higher as everyone everything here is fine we work you know things are busy but she doesn't she never goes into the true horror the true detail they're very much shielded from it in a way growing up that she was shielded from maybe a lot of realities of life as well and when her and barb and ethyl become you know this really tight-knit group you know ordinarily had they not been in Vietnam their backgrounds were as such that they would never have met they would never have been in the same social circles they would never have ordinarily undergone anything similar to each other but Vietnam brings them together and they share this you know unbreakable bond irrespective of their differences in background or differences in outlook and they remain friends throughout their whole life and they very much save each other under there for each other for the rest of their lives um i think they maybe deal with things a little bit better than Frankie does Frankie really struggles when she comes home um and it's it's the women are her saving grace and they return at different stages in her life to pick up the pieces and there's a lot of those stages and there's a lot of pieces now Frankie does make the point you know herself when she's talking to someone and she's trying to work through her her post-traumatic stress and you know she she makes that observation herself that her friends are seemingly coping with it so much better than her and one of the character says war trauma isn't a competitive sport which i which i thought was like a great turn of phrase you know twice suppose you know to justify or to explain like that you know everyone's coping skills are different and you know like there were times when i found i couldn't quite warm to Frankie's character as much as i wanted to at times um but i kind of was thinking about it you know for the purposes of discussing it and and i think that that might have been intentional on the part of the author like she is just a ball of enigma she's a mystery she i don't even think she truly understands herself so how could we as readers truly understand her as a character so i think i found it quite difficult in some instances to to relate to her or you know to fully engage with her um but i think that that was intentional yeah it's hard to understand why someone like Frankie would ever have signed up for vietnam she was the only person in her locality that had served the only female um and contrast to barb's hometown where everyone had signed up to serve because they didn't have the social opportunities or the opportunities for further education that frankie would have automatically just been afforded you know so it's it just kind of want to shake her sometimes yeah you know like the likes of barb was able to adapt because she'd struggled all her life and she was used to the struggle um and frankie didn't um so yeah and i thought you know her research was so good because uh like i taught this module whenever i taught her street relief insert and her description of the the whole vietnam war i thought was so accurate and how she researched uh the post traumatic stress that that frankie um suffered after coming back and so the very subtle description too of of blacks in america and how at that time they were second-class citizens i thought her research was very very good uh tina um it's meticulously researched in very detail and when you read all the thank yous at the back you know it is true to form as a piece of historical fiction you know and it and it brought so much back that maybe i'd forgotten that happened you know even down to the whole fake news element which we forget maybe just isn't something off the trump era um you know where what was what was being told at home through the media and through the newspapers what public information was given was very different to how real life was in vietnam and then when these veterans returned home they just couldn't get over why they wouldn't be afforded sympathy or why they weren't they weren't given a hero's welcome you know why everything was so pure so it was it was and i suppose that was a feature of world war two as well but it's just a case where the media had entirely led the american public astray and they weren't grateful for the sacrifice of so many young men and women um to quote that part paul hard castle song i'm showing me age now team what was the average age of the death of the young men in america at the time so yeah it was a very very well researched very detailed very true to form and just very much gripping you would wonder in the way that firefly leon has already been serialized would this be picked up as well and certainly and i think it is actually and its scope it's vast and often it has the emotional depth as well likes and dislikes uh louise oh lord um i i did like the the overall story but i've like as a genre i'm not really sure if war stories are my thing i found some of it you know difficult to read i suppose like most people i'm anti-war i don't understand yeah i just i don't understand why anybody would would head off to war as frankie did but again obviously cultural context and all the rest so i found it difficult to read it's very descriptive um and it's graphic but it you know what is what it says in the tin like you know it's a nurse in vietnam so obviously it's going to be quite graphic i found that difficult at times so to read um like i was heading over to uh edinburgh to visit two of my friends and i was in the airport by myself so i was like right i'll sit now and i'll have wee burger and i'll read another couple of pages of the book so i started reading anyway and i was just chewing the burger and there was a part about an amputation of a hand because gangrene had sat in and i was like right i'll eat first and then and then i'll carry on reading so you know it is but now she doesn't sensationalize it she doesn't kind of make it all gory and you know it just is what it is it's a very traumatic situation um and that is depicted very accurately but it's it's difficult to read at times you know so that would be something that uh that i found a little bit on satan likes dislikes tina um i like the fact that you were quickly hooked um the for the maybe the first 80 percent 90 percent of the novel it's paced really well it has really relatable characters that has a lovely storyline it's if you like a good cry it's a really poignant emotionally charged novel my dislike was there were times where i was kind of checking how much was left how many pages were left and i was like surely nothing else can go wrong and it kind of gets to the stage where it's it's trauma after trauma after trauma and it's like frankie pull yourself together here because if i think if these three friends existed in real life at one point they're going to say no it's time for you it's time for you to pull yourself together i kind of felt as if we could have just maybe had one trauma less towards the end because i felt maybe the last 20 dragged a small bit for me it's full of romance it's a great read but just towards the end it was like no come on wrap it up christin let's go out of ten we never even got talking about the four romances she had but uh we'll let the readers find that out themselves out of ten i'm going to go for an eight on this one eight as well eight and i'd give it a nine because i i do i do love her it's not my favorite book of course i think the nightingale was my favorite book i've read about five of her books the nightingale was my favorite but anyway as i said i would recommend it to the listeners tonight to go out and and and and buy it and i think it has been made into a film as well so tina and uh louise thank you so much for joining me tonight and uh hopefully we'll get you back again sometime thank you visit any show and co-op home build show at any show and get me hotel bon crana on saturday april 13th 11