 Hi, my name is Verna Craigness, and I'm Executive Director of Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society. It's a 41-year-old organization which has a mission to promote sustainable food systems through education, advocacy, and research. And I know that all of us wish we could be out at Carrington today, but I'm so grateful that technology is able to actually bring the information to the wider community about all the wonderful work that is unfolding. And Northern Plains has had a long history of working with research at both NDSU main campus and in Carrington, but particularly with many field plots in Carrington. And we've had a relaunch of what's been called the Farm Breeding Club work this past year with funding thanks to Ceres Trust and to OCIA and to the Cliff Barr Foundation. And we're very excited to have two examples in particular to showcase. One is Buckwheat, which Steve Zwinger is going to be sharing more information about. He's actually been nurturing that along since some seed was provided by visitors from the Ukraine a number of years ago. And this year is growing it out along with Owen Transscrewd in the Anderland area. So basically the other research project that we got involved with for this year I will speak a little bit more about. And this is bringing us into a partnership with the Mendaman Institute. The Mendaman Institute is growing out of the long time research done by Walter Goldstein at Michael Fields Agricultural Institute in southern Wisconsin. And he's been over the years developing crops that have a real focus on trying to help support healthy soils, healthy plants for people and for animals to be eating. And in that he had developed some particular qualities in corn which he was really excited for the opportunity to do testing of in partnership with Northern Plains. And the particular plots that we have for this year, one is in the River Valley here nearby in Minnesota and another is in South Dakota and the rest there's one at Carrington where we'll have some field shots and then several other farmers in North Dakota as well. The corn that we're looking at is unusual in that it has protein yields that are much higher per acre and the grain has 16% more protein, 30% more methanining making it really valuable for organic poultry producers for instance. This is going to be really important in the future if this becomes an amendment that's no longer allowed and it also allows for this corn to be used as a poultry feed without needing to add soy which makes it actually a higher value crop because of that savings. And something that more small scale farms that want to really try to produce what they then use for feed for their own livestock would find of value and interest. This is very consistent along with the qualities of the buckwheat with the work that Northern Plains has been really interested in for many years and that is to really do research that is developing particular varieties and crops that will be very useful to and supportive of sustainable farming and of organic farming. We have some eight varieties in each of the test plots, they're unfertilized ground with a swath of manure across the eight strips and then comparing hybrid corn with some of the different selections that Walter has been working with over the years. He's also looking for the possibility of nitrogen fixation with the corn which is a quality that he has remarkably been able to breed into some of the cultivars that he's been working with. Again I'm very very happy to have been able to help be a part of this virtual field day and so happy to have this partnership strengthened and renewed once again with NDSU and the Farm Breeding Club work and to have these two particular crops that we're highlighting for this year.