 My name is John McIntyre. I'm a scientist consultant for ILRI. I'm working on co-editing a book on historical impact of ILRI and its two predecessors, ILCA and ILRAD, along with Dr. Delia Grace and Ekta Patel, whom you probably know. Many years ago I worked for one of ILRI's predecessors, ILCA, the International Life Stock Center for Africa in Ethiopia, for five years. And before that I had been a graduate student, among other things, working on the economics of rice production near Seigu and Central Mali, which was historically one of ILCA's and ILRAD. Near there was one of ILCA's and ILRAD's field research sites. So long, long ago, once upon a time, I was doing a survey of rice production, as I said, near Seigu and Central Mali. And I was doing questionnaire on how much land people had, how much labor they did, what they produced, how much, et cetera, who did what in the family. And I was approaching the difficult and delicate subject of livestock holdings. People don't want to tell what their livestock holdings are. They're afraid of taxation or confiscation or some of that kind of problem. So, but, you know, I had been living in these villages for a while. I developed a certain degree of confidence, you know, with the people they were used to this crazy white person running around and asking all sorts of personal and intrusive questions and measuring their fields and so forth. So, we got to the issue of pretesting the questionnaire on livestock holdings. So, I assumed, I was 26 at the time, didn't know anything, that the livestock holdings were all by the mint. So, we're interviewing the male head of household. And these were typically extended households. So, he would have an older man and his sons and his wife and their wives and their children. So, you would have at least three generations in most households and they would be extended. And some of the households were as many as 50 people. But I said, okay, I'm going to start with interviewing the head of household and then work down to the other mint. So, I was, I pre-tested this in a few households and I got to the end of one household, which was particularly large. And then what I would do was I would ask the questions and I'd write down, show people what I was doing and the numerator would show them what I was doing. He would explain to them just to make sure that this wasn't going to the tax authorities or anything. And I said, okay, thank you very much and we're finished for the day. And then finally, and the women were sitting off in the corner, finally one of them, one of the women said something to the enumerator and he said, whatever he said, I can't remember. And I said, so what's that about? And he said, he said, she wants to know why you didn't ask her about livestock. And I told her that you weren't asking the women. I said, well, do they have many livestock? And then they all start laughing. That's of course they do. So that was my moment. Well, this influence in many years of doing field surveys in African countries and in Latin American countries after that have taught me that on this area and in the division of labor, the division of assets, the division of responsibilities, the division of control and power, if you will, there's there are no simple answers. I mean, African agriculture is by far the world's most complicated subject. Because just when you think you know something, you find some other stuff that you had no idea that existed and certainly in the area of gender, because it touches on, as I said, the division of labor, the division of responsibilities, division of assets, the division of power and control within and between households, that, you know, you have to be very careful and thorough that you've asked all the right questions to the right people and not just ask one bit, one question or a set of questions to one person on the assumption that he knows what everybody else is doing, and he has some adequate knowledge to respond intelligently or openly to whatever the question may be. This is particularly true in the area of gender, but it's true in many areas of agricultural service as well.