 Thank you for this opportunity that I am having me today. I'm from Lincoln, Nebraska. My name is Shahab Bashar. I work with Community Crop as a farm specialist. We are non-profit based in Lincoln, founded in 2003. We manage around 19 acres across Lincoln, farm, garden, micro-farm, and greenhouse. This year we have 10 community gardens, two farms side, one micro-farm, and two production greenhouse. We also provide advocacy and education. Lincoln is one of the, I think, very diverse. There's a lot of refugee from different backgrounds. There's a population of close to 300,000. There's 293,000 people in Lincoln. It's a college town and it's very diverse, especially for people from the Middle East. There's a lot of refugees from Iraq, Syria, from the Middle East in general. We have around, we have 10 farmers and about 200 gardeners in these community gardens. They speak different language and they are from different backgrounds. Many of you ask, what does Yazidi mean, right? Something is just new to you, maybe. I'm from Yazidi community. Yazidi are a minority in northern Iraq. It's no religious groups. They are not Muslim, it's different than Muslim. They are, they speak in Kurdish, Khurmanji mostly. They've been through the genocide in 2014 by ISIS. They killed, kidnapped about 12,000 of my community. By the way, I am one of the survivors. I have, I have three years as a wife, but when I came to United States, my years was two years old. So we survived the genocide. Incredibly, we survived. It was so hard to survive with all of this attack. So how I came to United States, my family worked with the U.S. Army, my uncles, my brothers, my brother in law. Many of my family served in the U.S. Army, so we get a special, we, because our life was in danger in Iraq, we get special visa to come to United States. We have a lot of background farming back to Iraq. When United States, one I think, two other countries, mixed section of Iraq, we had to go our food. So we couldn't, there was like a lot of food you couldn't find. I, until 2003, I didn't see any banana or like a lot of orange or any, oh God, we couldn't, I, we didn't see this food. There was no electricity. So we reserve it. We dried a lot of foods. We grow all of us, especially Yazidi. There is no exception. All Yazidi were farmers and farming a large area, especially tomato, cucumber, and watermelon. Also, my grandfather and my father and my grandfather were farmers and doing, depending on the farm. Yazidi, this group in United States around, not sure yet, we are doing some data collection, but around 4,000 to 5,000 people. Most of them we are in Lincoln, Nebraska. Some, some refugee from our community came and then the other come to, to them, it's like that. So we, we come to Lincoln's and we, now we call Lincoln's home in Nebraska. In 2019, I get opportunity to join the community crops as a, as a little interpreter for three languages that I speak Kurdish, Khurman, Yusorani, and Arabic. So I become a farmer with community crops, non-profit organizations. And they wanted to, they have all the many gardeners from our community and this gardener wanted more land. They told me we have a program called Yazidi training programs and we need farmers. So I, in 2019, I used to, I, I, I was a teacher teaching a student basic English. So I taught my student what's your idea to become a farmer. Finally, I found three farmers. They told me, we need four farmers. I told them I could be a farmer. So I joined theirs and become a team of farmers. We looked for the seeds. Before I came to United States, people told me the most thing to see were fish would be the food. It's short. There's no taste. It would be very difficult. In 2017, I came, when I came by, you know, no money, no things. The basic things I have, the government gave me some snack. I buy food from Super Saver, from Walmart. To be honest, there was no taste. It was like, the food was like plastic. No taste, no smell, no any, any changes. There was a, I shat it. I said, right. It was, I want to return to my country, even it's dangerous because of the food. After I joined company crops, I went to farmer's market and I brought some, some of this produce to my wife. I told her, I get a surprise for you. It's from Iraq. When I show her the food, she said, wow, where did you get this food? I told her, it's grown here. We go by local farmers. Then we started to grow our own food. And the food, I look for the seeds that the produce we could find in the markets. I asked my community, we are a lot here. Many Kurdish, many Yazidi, many Arab, many, many people from Middle East, at least 1000, 10,000 people just in Lincoln. There is no caring salary. There is no garden trees. There is no a lot of Daikon Raj. You couldn't find any Daikon Raj. There's no pickling peppers. It's kind of the sweet peppers we call Gorbachi or some of them. It's very similar to Labardo from Italy. I get the seed from Italy. Also, there's no green eggplants. There's no, no a lot of eggplants. So that was the community cravestine to order these seeds and grow it. This year, we were not very successful. We didn't give up and we tried to find the customer and make trust people that is grown here. Now we are these farmers, about 6 of these farmers, we are 10, 6 of them from the community. We are feeding 1000 people with that caring salary, garden trees, 1000 and 1000 and 1000 of bunch of people. The community is happy and they are buying more and the farmers are striving more. So there was always some challenge for these farmers to adapt to the new environment. Back to Iraq, there was no wheat. It was just easy. The dry lands and the water, there was no wheat. The one of the biggest challenge was the wheat problem. So we day and the night we are working, we couldn't control the winds. Community cravesty, based on the farmers' need and struggle and challenge, found a ground with the SARS for 3 years about wheat suppression study for culturally important cravesty. Many of you say, why are you two pickering paper and eggplant? These two products are chosen for them because farmers are concerned about this and there is a lot of wheat. We all go with these two products. Pickering paper is the sweet paper, it is like sweet and it looks like Gorbachi. We use Gorbachi and the Lombardo variety both from, I think Gorbachi is Turkish sweet paper. First year, we work at, the ground was a word from SARS and the person was in charge of the Dr. Sam Worthman from University of Nebraska. With his student, they designed the project. The biggest farmers participated in the project and we use it as seed of the pickering paper and eggplant. The design of the project was for Dr. Sam's student, but the data collections team of the community cravesty, which we are for a number of teams from community cravesty, we help it. Then first year what we did, ah, wheat control strategy, we tested straw, wheat chips, hand-witting and geotec, landscape. Four plots and four control plots, sorry, and four experiment plots. Data collected from these four plots was the data of the real produce. This damage also, ah, wheat count. Year one result, so mulching provide bear wheat separation, then hand-wit, which was not different than control. Benefit of the straw mulch, picked land over the times, was no benefit for it. The control plots were hand-witted, so mulching provide no yield benefit. But the geotechs was one of the experiment farmers like it. There was a lot of benefit of using the landscape, the geotechs. For the year two, based on the last 2021 experiment, what farmer notes on the team of the Dr. Sam's and the community cravesty, we used the geotechs. All farmers wanted to use geotechs. So for the first year, who of you are farmers now may feel bitter at taking the eggplant? Some years a lot, some years not too much. So based on our experience for the first years, we did the same of the two projects, eggplant and the pickling peppers. But this year, we're using the geotechs, using the method of covering, base and covering, using the raw covers. So we tested the same barrier, which is the raw cover, to the control leaf beetles, based on the 2021. Of course the barrier reduced the injury of eggplant. I was one of the participants and one of the team in managing it, there was no affecting anything for the peppers. The paper is not affecting the eggplant, just eggplant. For the year three, the experiment repeated, the same experiment repeated. The same barrier was repeated 2023. Benefit only absorbed in the two parts of the eggplant, not for the pickling peppers. Outcome and farming, what was the result of what we did? Farmer like geotechs. And farmer learned some things about the raw cover. So, you know, philly beetles are very bad. They eat all eggplant. And our community is the eggplant one of the very popular and also peppers. But the eggplant, people didn't affect by the philly beetles, just the eggplant. So now our farmers using the geotechs, the landscape a lot. And they are, there's more thinkers in the predictions. In the beginning of the years when transplant from the greenhouse to the land as we are using the raw cover, until the eggplant grow to become like less than a month, there will not be affected by the philly beetles. So, also, using this landscape, geotechs reduce the labours, you know, a lot of work we did. We have video for four first year, we have farm living material. Also, we have year of workshop. Amy, journalist, my co-worker, supposed to do this presentation for some reason she couldn't tell. So, she's a expert in the farming and her emails here, my emails, I would thank you for listening and I will thank SARS. If you have any questions, thank you. Thank you so much for listening and you always could email me or Amy if you have any questions. Thank you so much. Thank you, Sahab. We are very pleased to have you. It was a very thought-provoking and insightful perspective to understand food products, especially from that. Coming from different backgrounds and how important the food is for you.