All right so I'm Dr. Maria Elisa Christie. I'm director of Women and Gender in International
Development at Virginia Tech's Office of International Research Education and Development.
Welcome to the launch of our Women Gender Development discussion series. We have the whole
series set up throughout all the way to May which we've never had in the past so we're very excited.
So I want to begin- and I also want to welcome people on webex we have people joining us on webex
you are not going to get to see Daniel you're going to be seeing the powerpoint. However
for you all on webex and anybody else that wants we will have this post that's being
recorded by the library and so we will have a link and it will be posted on our website.
yeah somebody else is on the mind okay that's bad
no more echo okay i did okay so we'd like to begin today by acknowledging that this event is being
held on the traditional lands of the Tutelo and Monacan people who are the original custodians
of this land of Virginia Tech and I have to say that I have to introduce
so she's very embarrassed I'm going to do this my mother is visiting it's her 90th
birthday she's here as part of her celebrations she's like gonna die.
All right thank you very much okay so I have sign-in sheets I'm gonna start them at
both ends we didn't have at the front because we end up not getting signatures
it's really important to us to see who's here so please fill them out we'll pass them out
in a minute and the schedule for the year is in the back if you want to look at that
okay thank you and we will be having speakers from different countries and topics ranging
from Ethiopia today, Nepal, central America, south Sudan, Indonesia. Our next speaker will be a PhD
student here at Virginia Tech, Flora Lado, who's a PhD from south Sudan working in mining petroleum
engineering so you'll see that on our website and on that list that's going around okay this
discussion will last, Daniel's presentation I'll introduce him in just a sec, will last 30 minutes
and then we'll have about 10 minutes for questions discussion but we have the room for another half
hour after that so if anybody wants to come up and talk to him you know probably that's fine too.
Okay so Daniel is the assistant director for our gender development program here at Virginia Tech
where he provides research and analytical and technical support to all of CIRED sponsored
projects including the integrated pest management innovation lab which this research is based on. He
documents gendered impacts of IPM integrated pest management activities around the world. Before
he came to join us he worked with acdi voca's monitoring and evaluation unit in DC there's their
big development organization and he contributed to the development of gender first monitoring and
evaluation framework which we're drawing from that expertise here. Daniel was my graduate student
he has his master's from geography here at Virginia Tech so it's very cool we have it
back in his bachelor's degree is from James Madison in anthropology. Daniel it's all yours.
Well thank you for that introduction it's great to be presenting as part of the WGD discussion series
again when it's moved from that tiny library conference room in ORD to now here at the Virginia
Tech library. So today I just wanted to share with you briefly some initial results from an ongoing
research program supported as Maria Elisa said by the IPM innovation lab and done in collaboration
with Virginia Tech and Virginia State University and so to kind of talking today is how looking
at this intersection between gender labor and livelihoods and our overall goal is to document
kind of how gender relations norms and attitudes determine how women and men are involved in
managing invasive weed and kind of the different maybe gendered impacts from that invasive weed
so before we kind of go two furthers on what is that invasive weed that is really a threat here
in the Ethiopian community to be talking about today and that is parthenium hysterophorus false
very um you see very aggressive weeds native to central America but as you can kind of see
from the green where it's at home range to where it's spread and red very aggressive in taking over
habitats and kind of in Ethiopia it was thought was kind of introduced during the
1970s and there's i would say some debate on how it was introduced whether it was through
contaminated food aid or some farmers told me it was actually from the camouflage netting from
Cuban soldiers that came to support the regime during the Ethiopian Somali
war so it's interesting how it was introduced as quickly from Ethiopia spread throughout
southern Africa and also into Australia and south Asia it's a very invasive pest and really it's
because that reason here it's a really adaptable to a wide range of habitats great drought tolerant
and it kind of also releases toxic chemicals that's alliopathic and really kind of choke
out other vegetation around it so it's a very i would say a very nasty your garden variety we
are going to spray Roundup on which we don't want to do that innovation but really what comes from
this weed is really is more its negative impact that it has particularly for rural smallholder
farmers in particular one way just by impacting agricultural productivity it reduces crop yields
and in Ethiopia in this context that's primarily for test and other sorghum other
cereals that can substantially reduce yields there and kind of past research has said that
anyway from sorghum you can be reduced from 40 to 97 depending on kind of the site conditions
and the other aspect you can kind of see here in this picture that clearly
is the increased labor burden here this is more kind of a community setting on a road
but it requires repeated continuous weeding to kind of remove the feeling keep the field clean
And in a context like Ethiopia where livestock is so important this is more kind of detrimental
again for smallholder farmers here one as i mentioned that allopathic
tendency can really choke out displace a lot of those native pasture species
which again if cattle kind of seen in the picture there on the far my far right on this screen there
or other small ruminants like goats sheep it can have a lot of really negative health impacts
for the quality of life for that animal again and they totally a story of women told to me about how
califor california started losing weight started having uh um blood in her urine just very negative
consequence for lifestyle acts of cattle and in regards here this middle picture of the dairy
cow they're kind of just uh grazing their own parthenium it taints the milk and meat as farmers
will say gives the milk or any kind of dairy products a bitter bitter taste to intense and same
with meat products and finally causes injuries as you can see that goat kind of lesions again around
the mouth area for uh that graze upon it so very a lot of negative livestock impacts on livestock and
this is not only detrimental to maybe household or household consumption but also if they're
sale of any of their dairy meat products or other livestock as well
and then also it's just a negative impact on human health as i've been it takes longer to weed not
weeding typically farmers you know don't use a lot of protective coverings they're just out pulling
uprooting the weed and in one ways it can cause these skin rashes
as you can kind of see in these case examples from a study done in ethiopia very nice nasty lesions
it can cause through continuous exposure hay fever bronchitis and asthma i will say i felt that
somewhat even in our own trip to uh in the uh at the rearing sites uh recently in ethiopia and also
continuing eye irritation this is another common one that farmers mentioned to me is coming you're
out working it starts to rain you get sweaty you go to wipe your face and your eyes and your face
will swell so a lot of negative health impacts a lot of negative impacts related to parthenium
on the livelihoods of farmers so kind of in response to these challenges i would say
the research for development project based funded through the ipm innovation lab led
by virginia state university since 2005 has been working to kind of establish
these two bio control agents natural insects that not feed are prey upon different parts
of parthenium the one there you'll see the leaf-eating beetle the zeit the zygogramma
there kind of more feeds on the leaves the adult whereas the stem boring weevil there listernatus
uh feels more kind of burries and does damage into the actual stem of the plant and again here this
is again part of the ipm innovation lab and uscid's broader effort promoting innovation
productivity through enhanced agricultural technology development but i'll say that
even with these bio control agents these two insects and i if you have more questions in
general this took a very long process started in 2005 and you can ask moony or anyone else maybe
involved in ip innovation lab just getting to a stage where these insects are maybe being released
into the fields it's been a long time but being reared in these um developed veering sites and
being released to product and then you can kind of see what kind of impact here the zygogramma
having defoliated the parthing in there but it's important i think of frequent questions that
i i know i asked this the principal investigator won new mercy the first time so what happens
insects just can eat all the parthenium then the agents are going to die off no it's kind
of eventually get to kind of a threshold and that the the bio-controlled will not completely
eradicate parthenium from ethiopia or from southern africa they're going to get to a level
to control it to where the natural vegetation can start to uh recompete because again with
the livestock size a lot of where there was over grazing out of their soil bare earth that allowed
the opportunity for parthenia to really come in and invade those spaces and really take control
so kind of what then my role here with the active innovation lab and what we were interested in
kind of building off previous research examining the this linkage between gender weed management
and livelihoods and so one from standpoint from previous study we had from the organization did
was how do gender relations norms attitudes determine how women our men are involved in
managing the invasive agricultural weeds you know typically general weeding is primarily
women's responsibility principally throughout southern africa but just understanding how even
children are involved in managing parthenium and then how are women and men affected differently
by the negative impacts associated with parthenium infestation in this question
we're really building off of a previous study then in the another phase of the ipm innovation lab
which did kind of establish that there are gender differentiated impacts and kind of okay if we know
that there are these impacts how specifically are men and women maybe being impacted differently
and even men and women of different socioeconomic status that pattern and lastly related to the
rearing of the insects and the work of the ipm innovation lab what opportunities constraints are
there to developing a gender responsive outreach strategy for communicating information about these
new pest management options communicating with farmers engaging them in the conversation because
again from my own experience um farmers were very hesitant of these insects are they going
to graze on my tef my other products but it's host specific that there's a lot of communication
outreach needed to be done with farmers as well communicating the benefits of these two insects
and again as we're kind of more of an academic setting here
the discussion series also kind of how we've approached this research kind of from
a theoretical standpoint and kind of background is the emphasis on the role how livelihoods is that
looking here that that the smaller farmers are more than just their income generating
opportunities looking the full spectrum of their activities and how they interact those multiple
activities interact in different ways to how farmers make a living and then from the
feminist political ecology's perspective we're really looking here focusing on farmers everyday
lived experiences and how that interacts with man myth or land management and their agricultural
practices and the last part we're looking at is inter-household decision making here and we're
really viewing that household it's not a unitary entity or one that makes decisions and there is a
place of cooperation but also conflict and how we see that in relation to decision making how
farmers respond to pests like parthenium and how even decisions to willingness to try invest in
other new agricultural technologies like the um the bio control agents
as i mentioned kind of the product's been working in ethiopia and primarily where we conduct the
research in this study is in the uh community of woodland city and the balsa district juarez here
by this blue marker and that's where one of the project's rearing facilities is based on a farmers
cooperative there's two other areas where the icann project is releasing the bio-control agents
more in the west atombo university we had at jeremiah university
and so you can kind of see walnut cherry is only about 77 miles from the capital of addis ababa and
fairly close to get there there's a new expressway
and but the main thing is it's kind of a drier environment and the primary um
agricultural production is the main income generating source there for farmers
primarily through tef and sororicum some maize is increasing and also you see more
actually onion as increasing as a cash crop opportunity for farmers
the livestock is still very important in that regards to uh household consumption and then
where these this person of the one city is primarily ethiopian orthodox too as well
you can just kind of i like to see different acts they're kind of daily like the community of lunch
i said i was going to go to this screen right the screen capture which is kind of looking down
from the mountains also kind of the forest is a deforestation on the mountainside there's also
an issue the drier climate so access to water is increasing i was told this is the principal
water source for the community volunteering has to be piped from further away another
grain delivery day you can see here the remains of the original railway built by the french
but within this community so kind of our methodology in this process is we started
as a three-phased approach to our gender analysis kind of phase one that we conducted this past july
was kind of a rapid gender assessment both focus group discussions individual interviews and keen
informant interviews and we're hoping there to now follow on some additional research here with some
additional individual interviews in september and some additional work hopefully in november
with focus group discussions and key informant interviews as well and kind of in total for the
focus group discussions we had about 14 female farmers and then for the key informant individual
interviews we interviewed this period eight eight women and hoping to conduct an additional 22
individual interviews with phase two i think this is a very good entryway point that i mentioned
there we're primarily working with women in this case study and then i know maybe so my colleagues
at rid gender does not equal women you might be like oh why are you just interviewing women
in this context annual gender too we the focus on primary just interviewing women in this context is
that from the previous research we had known the labor impact does disproportionately impact women
we're also very more interested on the livestock side which women have more decision-making control
particularly in the dairy production on the dairy products that are produced on the disney state
so that's kind of that decision making process but maybe in that phase two phase
three is also important to understand and incorporate men's perspectives on
that relation especially in the decision-making process how they view the household household
as a unit through this key information interviews in that top picture we're just looking at work
with um local model farmers extension agents to get more information about the community
so for the focus group discussions uh primarily we focused again uh kind of a labor labor
breakdown who's doing what with regard to managing parthenium and even other invasive agricultural
weeds focused on women's culinary responsibilities i mentioned around dairy production and then men's
women's participation of an inner household of their household decision making kind of their
thoughts are there any norms or attitudes guarding what's appropriate for men or women not in that in
that discussion process in that decision-making process and the focus group discussions were
purposefully selected with the working of that agent just kind of in the area keeping it within
around the rearing side farmers that would be aware of the activities the project was doing
and also had issues with parthenium had livestock production and we also made a concerted effort
since there is a sizable percentage of would you say female headed households or households with
only a female adult present um now we include those as well in our sample at least two women
and for the individual interviews it was semi-structured to begin with focusing on
the impact of parthenium on their men's women's labor burden building off those themes in the
focus group discussion but also their beliefs and perceptions regarding contaminated milk
and then we had a very short household survey which we adapted from the women's empowerment and
agriculture index and that's a mouthful and you're not familiar with that it's a usaid development
tool looking at men's empowerment men's and women's empowerment and disempowerment
in agricultural production but from that we used it to look at decision making asking
who normally makes decisions regarding a series of activities maybe deciding when to we need to
go out manage the weeds that parthenium what types of dairy products we're going to produce when do
we sell our livestock those types of decisions so who normally asks us but also to what extent
do you feel you personally can participate in those decisions
so the different and we can just i'll share a little bit more why we ask those two questions
it's not enough to just who normally makes the decisions about x in a lot of times
and as i said we also conducted a series of key informant interviews and kind of in this picture
just point out um we're talking with the local uh development agents for this one of my
uh research assistants testifying laura he's a lecturer at onboard university just like to
highlight the amazing people we always work with in the innovation lab but also working with model
farmers as well to understand kind of that that outreach aspect how has the project been interact
interacting with farmers to communicate information about the bible control agents
in her case what can be done differently to better engage women in that process
and so kind of our first what we saw was that regarding men's and women's roles managing
invasive agricultural weeds first off parthenium was not like other weeds farmers said other weeds
can be managed i can handle other weeds i can go out i can clear those from the field parthenium
is an issue as this farmer one woman and said parthenium is issued throughout the year
but especially during the wet season the labor pressure is more during the west scene and they
emphasize it was a continuous process during that wet season between july to september
you're continuously having to go out and clear parthenium you might be rotating
your labor on your field but you're almost a continual process but even in the dry season
you're going out and clearing parthenium as well because if it gets established it gets established
and it's also during the dry season where you see men are kind of continually plowing tilling
the soil to kind of disrupt the parthenon as well so it's a really intensive year-long
as one woman there's no reprieve it's a continual labor activity
and when you think about it's compounded by here that manual controls slashing uprooting
and burning is the main method for managing protein it's the primary method too there is some
chemical control but not very common it's very expensive for farmers to purchase that herbicide
and also the negative environmental impacts related to that but i'll say kind of what maybe in
here maybe somewhat surprising was kind of in um different what we've seen in
previous research is that farmers our female responders interviewed that managing parthene
was a family activity it wasn't always women going out to manage the field it was men women
children everyone the whole family was involved in that process everyone had to be mobilized
that being said there was they did describe there was kind of a gender division of labor
maybe women kind of reported we more the burden falls on us
but you know the whole family is involved in that process in many of the weed and that's kind of
the impact there it's an overall for everyone a increase in their labor burden not just for women
what we also found is that kind of and whether this is directly related to the
parthenium infestation or other other factors it was increasingly common where farmers had
to rely upon hired labor or other community labor exchanges to supplement that family
labor it just wasn't enough to um to keep the weed under control so we found labor exchange
there were two forms one the farmers referred to as one fund and that was kind of a reciprocal
i helped you one day you helped me the next day very reciprocal you asked for that you can come
help you so women they said you know you're you know either asking for help in this way
or you're helping a neighbor in this aspect also the other one was kind of that i can't
say it correctly but normally but that one was not unlike one fun it wasn't reciprocal it was more
the farmers lower socioeconomic status that do i just need help i need help and when you ask for
it farmers will come to help you with whatever you need including clearing parthenium or just
one the older woman that i interviewed that uh just was a widow just needed help to everything
on her farm with plowing and all other aspects but in addition to these community labor exchanges you
also we also found the increasing of hired labor which was kind of eroding some of these community
labor exchanges where people were hiring that additional labor and that was a very clear and
relative indicator of wealth if you had money you hired additional labor force and you didn't
participate in the community labor exchange and some of the farmers were very bitter about that
that's when my neighbor won't help me anymore you know they hire labor they won't help me
but even that's an additional cost associated with that typically they would spend about four
dollars per labor per day of the equivalent of what an ethiopian beer to hire that additional
labor depending on your farm size your severity of infrastructure and there is a slight preference
to hire women as that additional labor and that's what we found was kind of for several factors
one is that the perception was that women had more extra time they were more available to hire their
labor out men were too busy plowing moving had um two women are better workers you wanted to
hire women women don't complain they'll just you know take the money they'll do the work they won't
complain about the food however one woman said the only problem with hiring more women is that
they take more bathroom breaks that was her her issue with hiring the female labor force
but it's increasing challenge to manage this weed is that if the labor demand your own familiar
label or that additional cost now that you didn't have to factor into your conversation your
that calculation so kind of in this management how is this really um impacting men and women's
labor burden and so again confirming it's really disproportionately affects women and it's not
so much from the explicit more hours spent physically weeding parthenium managing parthenium
is how that interacts with all their other multiple responsibilities is that additional work
it takes long because it takes longer to clear parthenium affects the amount of time that women
have to complete their own other responsibilities this woman indicated here it's not just the
weeding but all my other responsibilities if i'm late for managing the weeds and
handwriting takes all day my husband will be angry because dinner is not ready and he will beat me
and this had negative repercussion because it fits in not just the singlet everything
is thrown off the additional labor burden this additional pressure as they said it falls on me
it's not necessarily the physical exertion of weeding but the additional anxiety the stress
level that that these women refer to as more the the the main negative impact labor-wise
and another kind of surprising way we found was that intersection of this with food
okay so with that additional labor burden if you hire additional laborers or you for
the one from the community exchange you have to prepare food for those people coming to help you
and so that's additional money spent to purchase food more time to make food and it's this woman um
here making coffee with parthenium there's more pressure on me because i'm the one who has to
prepare the coffee in a jar in the morning and i have to help with the weeding and feed the hired
laborers this additional cost this additional time it's more this this intersection with with
food and these multiple responsibilities is more than negative uh impact that the parthenium has
on women and kind of related to uh the milk this aspect here is kind of we focus here as a kind
of women's um role media is prepared as again the food preparing food and managing household
nutrition so by men and women all farmers believe that parthenium negatively has negative impacts
on the quality and quantity of dairy products how that negatively impacts children and this is more
negatively because they're the primary consumers of these dairy products so in response kind of as
an adaptive measure farmers have started to keep their cattle within the house lock compound and
some flying with them supplemental feed crop resident purchase feed which takes additional
time additional expense maybe non-additional labor farmers mentioned you know my move my
college inside my household compound but if i'm purchasing more feed for them and kind of the
last thing here too is that women's mentioned you know they won't when they're getting milk
from a neighbor or wanting to purchase milk in the market you know they will not accept
milk from a dairy farm that they know farmer that they notice in keeping their cattle anymore
because they know oh you know you're it's not any good i don't want it from you you know what it's
going to taste bad or it's going to happen they perceive it's going to have negative health
consequences for their children within that compound so that was some again pharma source
increasing source of conflict in the community and kind of anxiety uh for women because kind of this
impact is that they were able to continue their households dairy production those additional costs
and kind of relates to decision making within household and how that relates to pest management
alternatives is that we found okay ethiopia is a patriarchal society so generally men have
greater influence in household decision making that's kind of throughout this that's generality
but what we found even in our the brief number of interviews we did
is that men's women's ability to participate in decisions really did vary depending on their age
their education level and i will say in regards to our age sample when we interviewed here was very
biased in regards to experience working with other ngo organizations and how that their ability their
more confidence training more to engage in the decision-making process more respected i would
say that the the women we interviewed they um emphasized the importance of mutual agreement to
household decision making that we have to agree and as this woman says when making decisions a
husband and wife should be one person you know they may disagree but it's a collaboration to
overcome conflict that this is not the the norm the standard this is very atypical because there's
one woman reported to us there are two types of husbands in volatility those that respect
their wives opinions and those that are just dismissive and that's that dismissive is more that
understanding that women's perspective isn't as valued in agricultural production or in decision
making for the household the rule looking after the finances or small ruminants in that process
and so what we kind of found was the implications here for the ipm innovation lab
and in one way we found is that really that multiple responsibilities understanding wasn't
factoring into that impact of the wheat is not just labor hours spent weeding but how that
related to women's multiple other responsibilities now we need to have a better way to account for
that in our impact analysis in our assessment and how to respond be responsive to that
and second on the outreach side and i love this this this picture
it's kind of outraged activity we did after the focus group discussion
where um our women participants worked with our project coordinator there ipm and she described
the different processes of the zygogram visit astronauts and we walk through the rearing sites
area getting information on what is the benefit of these insects
and then we followed up afterwards and that these women oh yeah i talked to my husband i had all
the information about the insects and he agreed with me he respected my information my what i
had to say and we want to release the insects on a portion of our plot that by having that
information they were able to contribute more to that decision making so the implication here then
is how as we develop our messaging around the bio control agents to not just be aware that there are
differences between men and women but how to make it responsive to both their needs to perspective
incorporate them into training activities to help with disseminating this information
and so i just again i'd like to always just thank acknowledge the amazing team members we
have on this project with the pi at virginia state university dr juani mercy released
christie and then the two um as i mentioned lydia alemayo our project coordinator they're counting
out list renatus from the parthenium and then oh yeah and then i'm testifying from ambo university
also trying to count the uh insects happens at the end of day when you're finished with research
and sex but they're amazing team members and knowledge their contributions and so it's kind
of building on these kind of concluding questions in transition to like the discussion phase because
this is an ongoing research activity there's still we want to be responsive and adapt and how we can
further utilize it to best meet the needs of the project there but really focusing on maybe
how can we engage men in a slight way in this in our communication responsive in a conversation
where we're communicating information about the bio control agents but also aspects about
decision making and recognizing women's perspective it's not it's not maybe the term
ginger transformative approach but a slight way that it's just integrating that into our messaging
and how maybe we can develop better tools to kind of document those multiple women's multiple
responsibilities in our impact assessments in a more meaningful way to help the product thank you
so we have um 10 minutes for questions and then we'll wrap up and like i said you can come and
talk to daniel one-on-one yeah sure you know howard could you say a little more about how
the vital control agents are released households purchased them and released invisibility groups
at this stage um let me just i know what that kind of one stage i had read this the go back so
right now the testifymar he's the electorate ambo universe and he's working they're being reared
and they're releasing them in farmer's fields or in protected areas kind of like railroad
tracks where they won't because the issue with the parthenium is that you release the insects farmers
plow the parthenium and that that nutritional source but it's being released by the project
it's not farmers aren't purchasing it's just going to be disseminated on their land and
hopefully through natural productions like school will continue to expand be become established
yeah but it's not it's not a purchase for purchase or at a community but it does need
community i would say community level engagement on it to really recognize the benefits i mean
armor can speak more to this the challenging and one days that they've released working with the
farmer if you can release it on your land are you going to keep the parthenia in there oh
no i don't want to sign anything i'm just going to plow so it's really kind of keeping
some parthenium around to be that to be that food source for the biocontrol agents um and
that's i would say it's still in this very initial stages but i will say um through as i mentioned
the women that have participated in our focus group discussions four of them were interested
in an app requested that the project come and release it on their property and they're working
and then one also to have it followed up and monitored its impact they're on their households
yes thank you so much for the presentation i'm gonna ask you to have a class
2008 i was actually asked to uh answers invasive species in the uk
my interest was actually that uh to see some of these species can be inside and
then fed to the livestock because ethiopia is was a has a member about the number one
livestock country in africa and they have so many god stars
so uh we've done the same thing in mali we actually styled kasia which is another discussion
but the problem with palutenium you have to touch it you know to deal with it and it's very
very hard to touch i mean you touch it and then you feel like that and you you your body is
smuggling you know the tingling you know and all that so and also the livestock especially goats
goats can eat almost anything but the problem is both do not age plants patients with stiff hair or
pull on the on the surface so they would not touch it for grazing purposes you know i i demonstrated
that i wouldn't touch it but in in signing one you would not be in the building without being on
the women because they have to chop you know but handling it itself was so hard that i basically
had a business idea in styling for lifestyle pitch so i mean it's it's a it's a very difficult way to
i would say kind of the natural grazing too it's not i would say like that there's a
preference of most of the livestock to defeat on parthenium it's mostly when it's at that level
and when there's enough an abundance of the natural foraging species obviously prefer to
that but it's when there's nothing their part feels nothing about parthenium and that's the
additional bird now i would say is the cost of additional feeds and how this links to nutrition
on the milk because at least the farmers i talked with on but the milk production if you
had an extra you gave that to a neighbor but now it's well i'm having to spend more money on feed
i have all these additional costs i'm you know i'm selling that to you now i want to sell that to you
know you're not just giving it away to a neighbor so that's kind of that additional and some
the lower socioeconomic status you know is like i don't i can't get milk anymore you know i don't
get dairy products i don't have access to this nutritional aspect for my my children so that's
kind of a another interesting um culturally i would say impact from parthenium yes i actually
obviously kind of got close to something i wanted to ask about so i don't know who would it be the
best way answering it but since the um i assume the cattle selectively graze right so if they were
to let their like beef animals out would they they wouldn't feed on the parthenon they would still
yeah they didn't they would or they wouldn't they they would still yeah if it's if it's in enough
concentrations that it's there especially if the two need to see this stage when it's vegetating
once it has a seat here that wouldn't punch it oh that's what you yeah okay
i didn't catch yeah like the other thing is that that uh cuddle are not selected presents
you know they've got everything so if you have some other species with titanium they will eat it
you know but if it's pure they would select it they unless you know there's nothing available of
course you know they're reading you know so what kind of life cycle does it have does it is that
i was thinking about the labor part of once the um if you have the bio control agents out if you
if you need to keep some stamps of it right to keep the insects then you have that or feed um so
is it something that is it are there always at the same time are there seedlings and whole plants you
know i assume it's vegetatively it's about eight i believe an eight week i might not be the best
person to answer this question but it's about an eight week life cycle and maybe um very quilt
quick self uh propagating so but you have plants in all the different stages at the same time
i guess what i'm kind of asking was that does this mean that was that grazing will be if
you release the bio control agent if grazing will always be restricted because there will
always be oh no i think it gets to a level no it wouldn't have to always be restricted with the
cattle racing once that the native the natural species are able to come up again you have more
yeah so well one thing related to grazing also one issue is uh wandiya and our scientists face there
is that they release the language especially it needs young vegetation the understated
state and sometimes it can go and graze so you lose your psychodrama culture
or if it's a cloud but so it does need a younger vegetation and this is a major concern to increase
the population in our eating facilities that there should be a good supply of the parthenium plants
by the time we release them and it gets established by itself you will find that
there will be different stages of the plants or they would the population would still multiply and
increase but to establish it in the beginning you have to have that young vegetative stock yesterday
you know this parthenium closed luxury during the rainy season dry season it will dry up what
the beetle the other missile will do is it will bury itself an inch or two in the soil and it will
remain in the soil until the next rainy season when the rains come then again it will come back
you know come out of this fire and lay eggs on the growing plants so that kind of adaptation is there
is that the part i'm sorry is that the part of the cycle so the next by the next season
that you would expect that the sea joint is going to come up so that you could raise again people
could grace their animals again right because it doesn't go extinct right it's management rather
than control that's why i if you have to have the two species did i make any sense about my question
well you have to have the two species because of the different growth habits of or how they attack
one there's no one species that would give you 100 control so once he's on there leaves one piece on
damage the stems so you try to maximize the damage by having different uh species and
zygogramma and mramoto and there are others also so it's not just piece there too so you want to
maximize the control one species is not able to do that yeah no what i'm interested in is i don't
understand what the plant life cycle is not the interaction between the insects sorry that how we
would ever be able to release have freely grazing animals again that's and that's a labor concern
i think and every other factor that's what i was asking about
yeah i might not be the best yeah yeah i'm sorry
so we have been working on this project last 10 years
still we are in the stage of establishing this insect in the field
so right now we are seeing some indication we will be able to establish it
but still it is not you know confirmed yet so hopefully it will establish once it is established
in the field it will spread by itself like judge asked a question that people would buy
in this case there won't be any economic you know money involved the insect itself will spread
all over the place think larry had a question quick question the communal labor exchanges that
you mentioned that was really interesting that they're breaking down are they breaking down for
the fact that parthenium has come in and overwhelmed the labor needs or were they
breaking out for other reasons i think it's it's a multitude of reasons larry um i would say the um
the one fund is more commonplace now the the reciprocal labor exchange the
digi that one would definitely it was was less common it was more than in the area
and that might be where we tried in these additional interviews to tease out that because
we didn't quite when we went into designing this research activity we weren't aware of that
that the extent that those the importance of those into managing parthenium and i think we come
to to further investigate that but i think it's definitely i would say a major contributing
factor and that's and it just i think in general the other factors is more need for higher labor
in general for your agricultural production not just for because again you're managing the weed
but you also need it during your harvest time too you need that additional labor and there's also
parthenium issues addition at that period so i i personally think it's a major contributing
factor but i think we would need a little bit more um to confirm that a very good question
any final question angela is going to say about 15 years ago i was living in ethiopia
and working with wendy and when we first started looking at the preventive problem people were
pulling it up and throwing it in the ditches and then the rainy season would come
and it would be root so his first effort was to try and get the practice of burning in place so
i'm i'm just wondering are they are they burning now or is it does that mean yeah the main manual
control i would say predominantly method is is the slashing uprooting and uh burning is dual
and i saw a few of the fires on something close enough but yeah that's the mean great um one
other question yeah yeah um so you mentioned that the women are heavily involved in agriculture but
kind of the whole family is involved in tahini control do the men typically have off-farm jobs
are they also smallholder farmers but not as involved in household duties how
do they pass by their time it's a very very good question i'll have two answers for you
um and me and i would say again it i would say the farming there is more of a family farming
operation and in the time period time i was there it was also during like the main tillaging
land preparation so men were constantly out with the blocks and tilling almost every day i saw the
same group going out to tillmore at that specific point in the year um and other responsibilities
all farm labor is not as commonplace i would say here but again they have other with managing
their different their their cattle and their other more than men for cattle production um i
will say though in just my own observation men was also predominantly men middle of the day drinking
tala and the other local alcoholic beverage that was commonplace throughout
yeah kind of in this i mean again um is a family but it's again the best i think the best way
to describe it is it's more at the end of the day a lot of the woman described his day ends
and mine keeps going and i have to keep getting ready for the next day and that's more that the
you know you can't really ever catch up if that's that's the case
is that just the responsibility of the woman whose house it like the the land that they
own or is it potentially a space for women to get like a social space for women or is it just
like is there any sort of it it does can become a social space but it does fall
on on that woman's it's her responsibility to prepare food but i will say at least in the
in the decision-making process for the women i interviewed that came up you know as i had to have
my conversation with her husband several women indicate you know i don't have this amount of food
we can't hire this many laborers you know we can't hire them we have to drop this only to two today
and those you know they understand in some ways at least in the sample that we um uh uh interviewed
their husbands respected that understood that that contribution the distances you're making progress
but again that i would say that was atypical in that case and again the situation might just be
you know this is this is what we need you need to make it work in some regards last question that's
a very good question though and remember that you can come and talk to him after this but i want to
be sure people who need to go are able to go so let's question okay closing words thank you all
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