 First of all, I want to say what a wonderful privilege it is for me to be talking to Carl and Carl, how great to see you there and sort of a big welcome to this. And I might say this is Carl's idea that he was giving this seminar and he said, well, why don't we turn into a little hard talk, which fantastic for me. So a great init Carl's initiative. A couple of things about, I'll be talking a lot about Carl just now, but about the hard talk, hard talk has seen that at some time, since it was operational, and you notice that I've even put a tie on, because I always had a tie on, particularly for Susan, and these glasses I always used to wear which were my father's spectacles. I'm not wearing them today, but I still got them. And Susan noticed the socks that characterize every one of those hard talks, and as I'm only waist up, I've got them and carrying them. Anyway, what a little bit of a history, a hard talk. I mean, the history, hard talk is often focused very much on the politics, the history of it, was that instead of the annual planning meeting where people would get up and give a talk, and then they'd go over time and there was no room for discussion, there were a few issues selected every year to say, well, let's focus on some of the issues that are problem areas, or we want to know more about it. And so that's where the hard talk started, to focus on particular areas. A couple of changes is one is I left, it will be quite a long time again. So I'm not up with all of the politics, but nevertheless, I will have introduced a little bit of the politics. And this time, the focus is very much on Carl, who is leading. And so, let me start off, Carl, why are you leading? I mean, why are you leading? Is it politics, or career advancement, or why are you going? I can say yes. I'll be above, although in different sort of orders of importance, I suppose. Honestly, probably two things. One would be kind of career progression, and the opportunity that I have at Oklahoma State. So for those of you that don't know, I'll be going to Oklahoma State next month. I will wear three hats. I will be the director of their Master of International Agriculture program, which is an interdisciplinary program that prepares master students for international careers from a variety of different ag fields. So not just economists, but nutritionists, food scientists, animal scientists, vets, and so on. So a really nice opportunity to kind of use the skills that I've obtained at Illry to help kind of shape careers. But then also, I'll share it as well. You have left before, Carl. I have. Well, yes and no, though. I have left before and I haven't, though, right? Because, I mean, if you look at my tenure at Illry, I've essentially been continuously affiliated in some fashion or form with Illry since 2006. Even though that I left in 2008 as full-time staff, I never really left. I was still working as a pointee or consultant. So the business cards and locations change, but the affiliation with Illry has actually been pretty constant. I've actually had a long, now a 15-year affiliation with Illry, whether as staff or as a collaborator. And that's been a big one. So I've left and I haven't. So I guess it depends how administratively pure you want to look at this. Well, I'll come back to that a little bit. But picking up on your Oklahoma State University, I mean, is this, I was going to start off by saying, are you still searching for Utopia and is Oklahoma State the Utopia that you are looking for? I sure hope I'm not looking for Utopia. And I'm not sure if Oklahoma itself is Utopia. But honestly, well, I mean, I'll tell you what, though. I mean, when I went there in May for the first time, and I had never been to Oklahoma before last month, I was actually quite surprised about how friendly and personable a place it was. It was something that people are genuinely very nice, very friendly, very really down to earth. And that I really, I think put me a little bit at ease, because I'd never been to that part of the world before. And so that was actually quite nice. Is it Utopia? I'm not sure anywhere really is. For me, you asked some of the reasons. So one was career, one also is personal. And I'm on a stage in my life personally, where I have two small kids, which I didn't before, and other issues with the artillery. My oldest daughter was starting kindergarten next year. And I sort of harked back to my past a little bit. My father was in the Navy. And between the time I was born and the time I was five, we had moved 10, 12 times. And we settled in Southern California when I was five, and we basically stayed put until I went to college. And he left back to duty military as a result to keep the family kind of in one place for the stability of the family. And I sort of see myself in a similar situation in my life personally, where it's time really for the children, especially to have that stability of a place. And it's one thing for me and my wife to kind of go off on adventures every two, three, four years. It's different with kids. And so I think from that standpoint, I'm sort of learning from my own backgrounds. I mean, I think there are real benefits from kind of establishing some more and being some more that is a permanent position. I mean, Oklahoma State is 10 years against. So even that stability is really, really important from that standpoint. Okay. Now I understood that that was also a big part of it. I mean, the school of global studies is 20 years old. So it's a younger institution than Illy, which is 45 or something like this. But I noticed you're one of these Humphrey endowed chairs in the school of global studies. And I also noticed that there are six of them. So there are a lot that you've got to have a bit of bit of jostling there. I mean, do they all have different roles? I mean, you've got to get on with them all. So that's going to be a little interesting charity. Tell me more about that. Yeah, the global chairs, basically, they're different global, they're different chairs for different parts of the University. And so mine is associated with the College of Agriculture. There are other chairs in different parts of the University. The whole purpose of the chair is really it provides funding to support student scholarships and student experiences overseas. And so I'll control if I'm not mistaken, somewhere around $80, $90,000 a year to send students to different places overseas. So basically to support scholarships within the master's program that I'll be managing students are required to spend, you know, four to eight weeks overseas to get some sort of international experience. And that can be with a research organization or an NGO or some other kind of international industry or partner. And sometimes those are funded directly by the host. And sometimes those are those are those are those are funded by the chair. One of the conditions of the chair, which I think is actually really neat, is that it funds international experiences, but they have to be in developing countries. So they're not allowed to be in Western Europe. So they don't fund, you know, four weeks in Tuscany. Now, you're supposed to go If I can, I've got a couple of questions on that. I mean, one is one is the fact that you're sending out students, American students. One of the great challenges that we've had at Illry is building, I mean, is building, sending, getting students involved and educating students has been fine. It's strengthening institutions that has always been the challenge. So that those those students can stay in Africa or wherever the country is and not be catapulted back through the sort of career development type of thing that you're looking at into that. So that's one point. The other point is that in in there is more and more skepticism about Westerners going to as visiting students to different developing countries. I mean, great for experience. And I encourage it. But you've got to somehow they've got to be fitted in in the right way with the right political links and not this, you know, we're coming in to sort of sort your problems out type of thing. How do you respond to that? No, I think it's a valid point. For me, I'm looking at from a different angle in terms of trying to to enrich Americans who are often not very worldly to go overseas. And I think in that standpoint, you know, this kind of experience is incredibly eye opening. You know, a student that's, you know, coming from rural Oklahoma, you know, on a large farm that hasn't been, you know, 50 case from from where they've lived to suddenly catapult them somewhere where they can actually use some of their skills and mutually learn. So it's not just about them kind of going in there and having all the answers, but to instill upon them sort of, you know, you're there to learn and they're to learn from you. And so I think as long as that kind of communication is two way and that it's not sort of extracted, and that's not the point of the program at all. It's really to try to give our students a flavor in terms of what international work looks like, but then hopefully for others to learn from them in terms of their experiences because of mutual learning. And that's what I really want to encourage there. It shouldn't be just that kind of, you know, we have all the answers are going in there to dive up to dive bomb and then take over. It's really a learning process. I noticed that Tom Randall just made a note saying you're reinventing the Peace Corps. I like actually funny that Tom mentions that though, one of the parts of our program, although it stopped a few years ago, there actually is a returning Peace Corps kind of components to it. And so so students that the people that have come from the Peace Corps have had an opportunity to actually take the master's program and use that experience as a kind of a credits to what they've done for their degree. They are going to one of the things I really want to do is to see if there's ways to reestablish that that returning Peace Corps program stopped in 2016. So this wasn't a Trump thing was before that. And I'm not sure if it was done administratively within Peace Corps or what the history of that is, but it is something I would like to kind of look at. One kind of interesting area of students enrollment, I mean, there's about 45, 50 students in the program at any one time. But there are a handful of people from the military. And you know, military students, so these are students that are like on active duty, there was one student currently in Afghanistan, who is doing also kind of work, you know, kind of support kind of operation support. And you know, using that as part of their international experience is actually kind of, you know, kind of look at what they're going to do, you know, post post, you know, military career. And I think that's kind of interesting, you're trying to find ways of trying to link those kinds of perspectives into that. Okay, no, fantastic. We come back to that a little bit, but I want to do a few, look at a few other things. I mean, you and I first met in, I think it was 2004 in India, where you were just joining IFPRI, you just finished your, you just joined IFPRI as a research fellow. And then, laterally, you've been involved in policy, so central to your work has been policy. Would you not better have been stayed in IFPRI all the time? It wasn't IFPRI, the perfect institution for you and the economics to the policy? Yes and no. You know, I think look at this in two different ways. From a livestock standpoint, absolutely not. You know, I think going to Illry and building on the livestock work that I had started in my PhD, Illry was the natural kind of link and being able to have that kind of platform to engage not solely with economists, but across different sorts of livestock disciplines. Illry made the most sense by far in that regard. You know, I remember talking to, to Chris Delgado, who was joined appointed at the time, and when I had first joined, and, you know, he was sort of kicking himself, saying it's like, you know, because there was a, I think a postdoc that had been advertised about a month after I accepted the one at IFPRI. And he was like, I mean, you know, this is the perfect job for you. You should be doing this, not that. And that's actually kind of the genesis of my move over delory. In fact, kind of Chris Delgado's a little bit. Yeah. In fact, I got some, I was going through some old emails from Chris. Yeah, yeah. To me, when you go, Chris wrote to me and said, I think I found the person who you were looking at for, because we had a colleague from Uruguay who was, who was helping us on some of the economic side for him. That's right. So from that point, absolutely not. I mean, Illry does have a platform, sorry, IFPRI has a platform for policy, but IFPRI is a different place. You know, I've had two stints at IFPRI, once as a young research assistant, and then once as the postdoc of India, as you mentioned. And in those seven years in that gap, it really has, it really has changed and it's changed even more. And not necessarily for the better, you know, I think it's become a little bit too, you know, kind of, let's do, I don't know, the right political word for it, just be recorded. But, you know, it isn't sort of as researchy and academic and as maybe let's say collegial as the first thing that I remember. I remember, you know, as a 25 year old RA, you know, being able to sit in Chris Delgado's office, you know, for an hour and just talk about things, you know, and he would just, you know, have his time and just kind of, you know, be on a university. And IFPRI then was a really something. I mean, as a young kind of emerging scholar to be exposed to that was a really great experience. IFPRI today's difference, IFPRI today is like a consulting firm, you know, it's a very so it's feeding more into the world bank and things like this. Exactly. Yeah. The bank. Okay, I want to go, I want to keep moving. You then went into, you went then went to the American University in Cairo, which was a sort of a bit of a, which was interesting. I mean, I wonder what went, we met there because I was leading the independent evaluation of the FAO's International Responses to Bird Troop. And I remember, I remember meeting you there. That was, what do you, looking back on that, where did that fit into your, to your career development? What were the what were the positives about that? The positives were kind of giving me that sort of sample of academics that they hadn't had, you know, in terms of being a teacher in a lecture. You know, I did not have an opportunity in my graduate program, you know, whether master's or Ph.D. to teach. And one of the things that I did enjoy, you know, both at IFPRI as well as at ILRI in the time there was a training program that I was able to give. One of the first things I did at IFPRI when I joined in 2005, I think the next day when we arrived in Delhi, the next day we got on a plane to go to Colombo. And I gave a one week training course in Sri Lanka to a group of South Asian, mid-career South Asian policymakers on economic modeling. And I had an absolute blast. It was so much fun. I mean, just kind of training and working with students and, you know, they were enthusiastic. It was just, you know, it's just such a wonderful experience. And I had a number of other programs like that while at ILRI as well afterwards. And, you know, I did sort of see that there was something in my career that I wanted to see because that's something that I could do, you know, because that kind of engagement with students, that's commitment to learning that mentorship that was there. You also had that because you then went on for four years for the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, which was, again, a bit different, sort of a bit left field that we were given or not. I mean, it was fantastic because we had become heavily involved in various things. And so I got invited to do a couple of collaborations with you and you were heavily involved in Namibia. I did something for the Institute on the trade in flowers out of Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania, because Norway not being in the EU. And that was fascinating for me. What? So Norway, tell me about that. Looking back on that and where did that fit into your overall contribution? Yeah. At the time, I mean, so going to Egypt, I mean, the experience of Egypt was positive in the sense of I really enjoy the teaching. Living in Egypt and commuting an hour and a half each way in Cairo traffic was not so much quality of life standpoints. I mean, it's physically just exhausting. You just come home broken every day. And so it was really kind of partly mental health just to kind of get to somewhere probably a little bit senior, but then also to have a place where I could really try to consolidate out my research. And one of the great things about being in Norway was the freedom. Your remit in Norway was, if you have the funds, you can do whatever you want. There was, I mean, it was as horizontal as an organization as it gets. We've all had the performance evaluations at Ilri and this kind of stuff. A performance evaluation in Norway was, is everything okay? Yep. Okay. We'll talk next year. That was it. So it incredibly laid back open, free place, and a great place in terms of collaboration with Ilri to really build up some of this kind of systems modeling stuff that I've been working with with college. That was a great opportunity to do that because it basically, I had a chance to experiments. We had funding from Ilri. This is sort of the glory days of the first CRP where CG centers were flushed with cash and so there's opportunities to collaborate. And it was a great chance to build that program. So yeah, that was, that would be a wonderful. Certainly. I remember you were very, we were very productive there and you did all sorts of, then it was Lincoln University in New Zealand. Again, off you went. I had one of the things I've always said yes to was your inquiries or requests to be able to write references. And I, and suddenly another one came up after the museum. So that was again, took me by surprise. You were assistant professor of social agri business. So you were into a slightly different field. Fun or bureaucracy or? No, bureaucracy, sure. It's a university. So certainly some bureaucracy. I was head of department for a little bit. So there were certainly some interesting issues you have to deal with as far as department and other politics. So certainly that. No, I really I had some of the most fantastic students, you know, 80% of the students in the agri business and rural development program were ends at eight students. So coming mostly from from Africa and Southeast Asia and who works their tail off who were really, really just a fun group to work with and to really see how they grow. The challenge of New Zealand was more on a personal level, especially for my wife, in terms of distance, you know, our oldest daughter was born there. And, you know, my wife being very kind of family oriented, you know, you know, checks are very, very kind of close to their family. That was really hard having the 12 hour time difference, you know, with their, with their grandchild. And, you know, that became, you know, difficult in many ways in terms of trying to manage that kind of distance. So trying to find a way to observe. Okay, and then then it was early again, and this and back to your foresight modeling and policy and first of all in Hanoi and then and then off to Senegal. So I mean, you've got this nomadic reputation, but what you've done over the last couple of minutes, few minutes is sort of give some interesting justification and build of the incredible experience. Do you, I mean, it's easy in retrospect to sort of build together and say, wow, this was a great package. But you were a nomad, weren't you? To some extent, but I think there, I mean, there was a kind of a calculus of that process. You know, there's sort of some order in that randomness in terms of what kind of what motivated it ends, you know, looking back on it, I mean, I don't really kind of have any regrets in terms of that process, because I think it's built, been allowed me to build, you know, what I've been able to do as a researcher today. And, you know, the the opportunities that I've had, you know, to contribute to as an academic as an instructor, as a researcher have all been shaped by that kind of collective nomadic experience. And, you know, if I didn't have had that, I think I'm not sure I would be as enriched as a scholar as I am now. Okay. There's an old expression that is that goes back to the to the 1600s about rats in it was originally relating to a house. And then it then it moved into the sinking ship, deserting the sinking ship. Is that any component? I mean, I'm looking at really is the disintegration of the of the CGIR and the uncertainties of the different institutes. What do you feel about that? And what role does that play? Do I have concerns about one CGR? I mean, yes, I think all of us do to different levels. You know, what it actually mean for for the I really worry a little bit about what it means for the livestock agenda, that it doesn't get sort of, you know, kind of reduced or kind of just kind of, you know, it's important lessons somehow. I mean, that does concern me a little bit. You know, there are I think there's some great opportunities in terms of the ability to collaborate. But the speed at which it's taking the kind of the frantic pace, a lot of the sort of the sort of disorganization of some of the processes, I mean, it is a bit of concern. And I think it's a concern, especially in the role that I had at Illery in terms of where that role will fit in the future. And does that role still stay with livestock? Does that role go to IFPRI? And there are pros and cons of each, but that kind of uncertainty certainly, you know, weighs on one's mind in terms of what that's going to look like. I think in the end, having a bigger organization like one CGR, you know, potentially should work, but there's going to be some bumps over the next, you know, short term and probably medium term as well. And I do wonder looking at sort of a counterfactual, you know, if it would have made more sense for the CG to have maybe not been kind of one unit, maybe kind of, you know, three or four or five kind of bigger units from a kind of a thematic standpoints. And so in Illery, you know, combined with a world fish, combined with the livestock parts of other centers, that's kind of a mega livestock center or a mega animal source food center. And really using that as a platform for promoting the livestock agenda, rather than being kind of a player in a bigger, in a kind of a bigger setting where that agenda may not take as prominence of role as it does now. Because it's, I mean, the spectrum has changed so much. I mean, Illery was comfortable in East Africa. Then it long came, you know, 2005 or four or five, where Illery was out of Africa, and it sort of moved. And it was so then and then it's been struggling to find its position. And I remember on a hard talk in 2006, where I talked to the different people who were out posted in Central America or in Asia, as to how much they felt part of that institute. And of course, they all said, yes, of course we do. And we just don't quite get all of the information. But I mean, it's and now it's, it's emerged into something where Illery is still floundering to try to find that international role and and links with other institution, international institution. So, yeah, where's it going? Well, it's not going to be part of one CG and maybe one CG will actually help with that in terms of helping to strengthen some of the links outside of East Africa. I mean, to be fair, I mean, in West Africa, we are, you know, we're growing here. We've got five people now. We've were hopeful to get another couple of people on board in the coming months. So, you know, there's definitely growth prospects in West Africa. I think what Hung did in Southeast Asia when I was there in Hanoi, I think, you know, that that office has grown quite well. You know, there are challenges in terms of where the opportunities will be trying to kind of follow, you know, follow those emerging activities. A challenge in Southeast Asia, of course, is that Southeast Asia in many capacities has has developed, you know, Vietnam has developed really strongly. You know, I mean, compared from the first time that I was there 23 years ago now, it's a totally different place. And so, you know, trying to figure out kind of where we're positioned and to be flexible enough to actually, you know, be able to pivot to where those opportunities are. I think that's probably more of an issue that Hillary has in the regions, rather than its regional strategy as such. You know, I think I think we have done a nice job of expanding in some kind of core areas. But I think we also need to recognize that sometimes those core areas actually do change. And some of those core demands change as far as where we need to be. But that is something that I think if pre does better a better job than we do, like they will open and close off like country offices, depending on where the work is. We have not sort of done that yet. And maybe that's something that we explore a little bit, you know, thinking about how do we need to scale up one office and maybe kind of de-emphasize another one based on what those needs are. What about the different disciplinary components of Orville. I mean, I remember going back to an external evaluation of Orville right a long time ago, when someone said get rid of the epidemiology is bringing in more economists. We need economists. And then in Illry went through a phase of being overrun by economists. And so this balance between different technical skills to be able to meet the demands of this new position that Illry has at the moment. How does Illry fit in terms of its composition and how well structured are these sort of technical demands of the new institute made? Are they just off the cuff? Or is there something going into that? I think the overall composition right now is, I mean, in terms of like, you know, the balance between social scientists, epidemiologists and so on. I think on balance is not too bad. I think the bigger problem is, I think we're probably short staffed across the board. You know, the amount of stuff that we're doing in terms of the demands on Illry and research staff time, I think is huge. And we probably don't have enough people across the board, whether it's enough that's enough economists enough animal scientists and so on. I think we certainly need more people just to help kind of just support what we do. Where I think there probably could be a bit more kind of what's probably needs a bit more integration. You know, we're still a little bit siloed in terms of, you know, especially like on the health work, you know, it would be nice to see a bit more integration across some of the health work and maybe across some of the things like genetics and otherwise, where we can actually have a proper integration of social scientists within the different types of technical disciplines. I'm not sure we do as good a job as we could. I think we're getting there and I think there's a lot of goodwill towards that. You know, so talking to colleagues, you know, in different programs, different groups, I think people do recognize the value of working together. I think it's just trying to find those opportunities to do that. Okay, we spent some time in working together in Ethiopia on commodity-based trade and there was also some different consultancies we did on that. Where is commodity-based trade these days? I mean, I remember going through the different things, structuring the different disease constraints and the different opportunities and you did a great job in analyzing the dynamics of livestock product trade. Where is that as a force now or is it no force? I think it's there. I think it's something that that's OIE and trading partners really need to decide what they want to do with. I mean, there's certainly an advocacy group for commodity-based trade and, you know, Gavin, who just recently passed on, was one of the champions of that. But there's been others in Namibia that have really tried and been focused on this. They have to focus on this. There's some work and you know, pretty well. Andres Parris is doing some work in East Africa right now looking at, you know, the potential for, you know, for exports from East Africa of livestock products and trying to do some respiratory risk analysis to understand these kinds of things. And I do think that one of the benefits of the work that we did was to really kind of move the needle in terms of that discussion, that it's not just technical and that commodity-based trade is only an initial step. And it's not the full step. And I've had some, one of Andres's PhD students whom I'm supervising, we have these long debates about this because Andres has convinced that, you know, oh, yeah, we can export all this meat from Uganda, you know, to the Middle East. I'm thinking that's right. It's not going to happen. And the students, the student has done it actually a great job. She's done some work trying to measure the prevalence of FMD in different production systems in Uganda. And, you know, it's pretty shocking. I mean, the estimated prevalence of like FMD from my pastoral systems is just, you know, near the roof. And then sort of like looking at this, but then trying to weave a narrative about this saying that, you know, you've got a lot more problems than exports. And Andres tried to say, no, but we could actually handle this. And it's not so much. Right. So I'm going to, I'm going to show you something. This is, so this is, where's the photo Simeon? This is you in a slaughterhouse in Ethiopia during that, during that moment. If I then go on, this is you looking in a much more comfortable position in, in the Cavalry and Guards Club in London, when we were discussing the finalization of the Uruguay study. And then, and then this is in Montevideo in Uruguay when we were finalizing that. And so that brings me what I, what I wanted to bring that in to say is that Uruguay study, which we completed was a return for you to photo mouse disease, photo mouse disease. And South America was where you got your PhD to Jarvis was was your one of your mentors. How, where did, what did the Uruguay, is the Uruguay study? Where does it fit in the, in the products that you have been involved in and another institution? I mean, that was a real kind of, kind of a culmination of many of the things that had been previously, right? I mean, it really combines some of the PhD work from long ago, the commodity based trade work, a lot of the sort of the policy work. I mean, that was a fantastic experience as you're well aware. I think we had a great time engaging with, with, with, with government there. And it's sort of a unique experience too. You know, the Uruguay government is, you know, the capacity is very strong. They're very committed. They ask, you know, very tough questions. But you know, they really are, you know, they really, you know, use this evidence to kind of help to shape their, their policy, whether it's going to be, you know, accepting what we've come up with or not. They've been a bit more conservative than that we've suggested. That's fair enough. You know, at least they had this information, you know, that they could use to make, you know, a, an evidence based decision. And I think that's one of the real strengths. And one of the things I'm really happy about that, about that city. The one thing that you did not mention about the second photo with me and a tie is this Jonathan Russian being, being kicked out of the Calvary Club because he didn't have a tie coming in. That's right. And he had jeans on, I think. Jeans. And the guy was just not on with that. He had like, like an hour back to his hotel to like change. Yes. Well, that's it. One of the things that has, that has affected us all and, and possibly has affected the, the taking decisions based on the study in Uruguay, but globally is the, is COVID-19. And so tell me about the work that you've been doing or others in Uruguay or what you might, may be doing in the future on the economics of COVID-19, regarding to smallholder livestock settings and, and livelihoods, et cetera. I mean, what, what, what, what is, what is going on and what is the future for that? Because it must have had an enormous impact, but it's dissecting all these bits and pieces out. Yeah. I mean, I mean, Isabel is a better, a better source in terms of some of the stuff on the, the kind of value chain side to consult on this. I mean, my group has not done as much as we probably could. You know, we've, we've done a little bit. I mean, we're part of a COVID hub that, that homes, homes helping to lead or trying to understand some of the, the drivers of wildlife trade and how that actually contributes to COVID, to the, to the potential outbreaks of things like COVID and to understand ways of trying to mitigate those risks. So we are contributing to that, which I think is really exciting. We haven't done as much on the modeling side. And, you know, part of it is, is because we're just pretty much flat out on, on everything else. Ifpre has taken a slightly different tact on this, and basically, I think ifpre has basically dropped everything to like kind of do all things COVID last year, which we haven't, is that a good or bad thing? I mean, you know, that's kind of remains to be seen. And I think at some point, we will have to kind of reflect a little bit on this and have some types of foresight analysis that maybe kind of look back. But part of our challenge has been simply having the resources to actually kind of be able to engage in those kinds of things. So we, we haven't been strategic. We've done some things with Vietnam, as I mentioned. Natan before he left, did a nice little study trying to look at some of the effects on the East Africa, trade to the Horn of Africa and the impacts on the Hodge and so on that just came out a few months ago. So we've done some small things, but we probably haven't got probably engaged as much as we could. And so, you know, that that's perhaps a missed opportunity, but part of it's also just in the nature of what we're doing, we've got just so much going on. And it's difficult for us to say, okay, we do COVID, but not a lifestyle master plan. So that's what we've had to make. How will your, your work in the moving on to Oklahoma, how will the engagement with some of the important international organizations, the FAOs, the LIEs, how will that be affected? Presumably, there'll be a lot less, or am I wrong? Immune in terms of from Ilrie or from? No, in terms of from you, your, yeah, your new job. It's going to be more academic. Yeah. I mean, less on one level. One is I do want to hope for those to try to engage more students in some of the networks that I've had. And so to the extent that I can actually work with, to bring my master's students into some of my research and NGO and other networks to kind of build their careers, kind of to work with them as advisors, as mentors. I mean, that is an area that I will cultivate. But in terms of like directs kind of, you know, doing kind of consultancies or those kinds of things, I mean, that will be less, at least from a direct standpoint. I do plan to be kind of a kind of a puppet master behind the scenes, so for others. Okay. So I mean, having been working in a development agenda, you're now going to a comfortable academic position in a university. So, which is sort of doing research that is, but how do you make sure that you still keep this connection with impact and linking to the sustainable development goals and this type of thing? My work has always been applied. And it's always been kind of focused on kind of current policy issues. And so because of that, and because of that kind of focus of being very practically oriented, I don't think I'm going to sort of devolve into the esoteric and the kind of academic as far as what I do next. And it will be trying to work again with students on themes and research problems that really have an applied type of problem that actually solve a problem and aren't just trying to add a variable to a regression, for instance. And so, I mean, it will be a challenge to try to make sure that I keep those those those contexts current, and that's something that I will have to balance. But I don't see myself, you know, kind of all of a sudden doing theoretical research that has no bearing on anything. And that's just that's not what I'll be doing. Okay, I'm looking at time. But my last question before maybe other people might want to ask you that the economics of working equities in agriculture and smallholder settings throughout doesn't seem to exist. And as you may know, it's one of my one of my favorite things. And we're writing something at the moment about this. So I was when I was in Colombia in the end of 2019, and seeing these diverse settings, you've got the coffee and the role of horses and mules, you've got the sugarcane, you've got the water down at the coast and the role of donkeys. You've got potatoes being moved and the marketing there. I mean, that's just a little cameo. But it's it is so important. And it's just not on the development agenda is that because there are no figures, there is not anything to link in the these different enterprises with livelihoods and to encourage more. What is your view about that? Am I just is it just a fantasy of mine? I think it's an important sector. I mean, I'm reminded of it every day in West Africa. I mean, the number of jobs you see, you know, I mean, there are donkey and horse carts everywhere. I mean, they're the ones that bring kind of small supplies, you know, from place to place, they collect the garbage, they, there's so many things that you see, you know, a role for working equities. I guess one of the issues is sort of what is the, what's the intervention here? What is the sort of the, you know, what is the end game? What are you trying to move towards? I think maybe that question hasn't been very well articulated. You know, understanding the livelihoods and understanding kind of the contributions, you know, as sort of a baseline kind of set of information, I think is really important. And as you mentioned, you know, lacking, but what do we use with that information? What is sort of that's, you know, what is the sort of the next step with that? And perhaps, you know, trying to articulate a bit better, you know, where we're trying to intervene or where we're trying to promote to allow that agenda to emerge, I think would help that quite a bit. Okay. Okay. Fair, fair comment. It's, Isabel, I'm just very conscious of the fact that other people may want to make a comment or question, but, but certainly been, I've gone through a lot of my notes and yeah, I look back, this, this was a momentous thing, by the way, of also which was doing the that great gathering of people looking at foot-and-mouth research needed for endemic settings in developing countries, which you were, you were a huge part of. Isabel, would you like to open the floor? Yes, great. Thanks. Thanks, Brian and Carl, obviously. I think we can all clap virtually or not on that. Very much appreciated. Thanks, Carl, for your insight. Some people are saying that we should do it more often when people are not leaving, so that you can get to know each other better. So thanks, Brian, for that.