 I'm very glad to comment on Alan's paper and I think I'm very privileged to be able to comment on this because I think I've had the experience of actually experiencing what it is like in terms of migration and the implications for agricultural production and of course my own research has also been on issues related to migration and the impact on agricultural life within the context of environmental change in the northern part of Ghana. I think it is a relevant topic which is very much important for policy and I like the fact that you looked at different studies from Asia drawing examples and empirical evidence from different papers. In terms of the impact on the loss of labor I think that is a critical issue because if you look at migration especially from rural areas to urban centers mostly the economically active population they are often involved in this kind of movement and if you look at agricultural production especially in rural areas in South Saharan Africa and of course in Central Asia and of course other areas in the Pacific normally the youth or the economically active population they are mostly involved and if you look at in terms of migration it's also selective in terms of gender mostly the male active population they tend to move more and obviously that also has implication for agricultural production and output because in most rural areas in terms of land normally land is owned or controlled by the male and then women get to use the land through marriage or through inheritance through their first bonds and all of that so I think loss of labor is an issue but also something that would have been much more interesting would have to do with the situation of what's I termed as missing household heads where there was a situation where I observed for example in my own research work that there was kind of like the migration of morn males economically active mezu tend to be the heads of households and of course there was an increasing trend of female migrants who are also kind of like joining the the bandwagon of traveling out of the rural area so the situation was like children who were not able to work or economically active were left behind old parents grandparents mostly women because if you look at the population pyramid we have the males when you are when you are getting to the top ages then you have males who tend to die off and then leave old grannies around who cannot do any active and then of course it will have an impact on their food security in terms of remittances of course remittances is also an important rule the money that is sent back normally why do people move as a coping strategy to look for other ways of getting money or better ways of engaging in employment to cream much more income as compared to what we have been gotten from agricultural production and of course that monetary income that comes in as remittances can also be used to further acquire physical capital in terms of farm inputs and also to acquire land in terms of places where land is very scarce but an issue that we tend to also forget about is that and of course the keynote speaker this morning talked about this issue of social remittances if you look at levitt 1998 she talks about the various types of remittances and of course the motivation to even remit in the first place and I'm sure as an economist from your paper I realize that you are more of an economist into modeling if you look at Solimano's paper in 2003 on leveraging remittances you look at his try to kind of delve into various reasons why people will even remit in the first place so if you tend to draw on those areas to look at the motivation in the first place are people willing to to remit and of course also try to draw what I would say insights on issues related to social remittances where migrants who are returning tend to bring skills that they might have learned as a result of our migration and they eventually bring to kind of like facilitate agricultural production and of course with implications for output as well of course decision making is also a key issue that you raised in your paper and I think the decision making it may also change why as I cited the example males as household health there's that kind of changing rule where women begin to engage in agriculture and they might also even decide as to what crop in the first place to cultivate and what decision to take in terms of the household because the male household head is often missing investment in children you your paper talked about investment in children and you also raised it in your your presentation and you talked about education and of course improvement in nutrition you talked about the situation where there was a research there was a research where you talked about an observation where there was an increase in weight relative to their height so but I didn't quite get because there was no much insight as to how that played out because you just kind of like did some reference to that particular research so I think that is also another critical area that you can consider in your paper in terms of productivity gap obviously for those who are engaged in non-agriculture for example if you are into industry or into mining and all those things it is obvious that income will be more than the income that will probably or productivity that will you generate from agriculture what the only suggestion I would like to contribute to your paper is that there was I get the fact that the focus is much more on agriculture of course that is clear but I think what I realized was I found it I read your paper quite a few times about five times maybe and I didn't see much of what exactly in terms of agriculture the paper sought because you do instances or references to many research which I think was very good for the purposes of the paper but it it was a bit unclear exactly what the paper sought to bring out and I realized that you are an economist as I said earlier on but as a human geographer or social scientist for that matter I thought it would have there were you in your presentation you talked about theory of conceptual framework but that didn't also come out clear so since you are talking about rural areas I wanted to suggest that of course if you look at the systems theory of migration specifically Akin Mahbubingi's system theory of rural urban migration in Africa even though it's an old theory to say and it has also drawn criticisms I think it might guide what you want to do and you should at least draw on some existing theoretical framework or theoretical perspective to give some theoretical and depending to your findings and lastly I think I will just say that the what's interested me or what impressed me most or was kind of like interesting to me in terms of your paper how to do with should policy be used to promote or restrict migration and I think that is also quite important because I saw that you raised issues related to the migration policy in China I don't know whether KUKO or I don't know what I'm getting it right where they tend to restrict migration and all that but I think neither should there I agree with you neither should there be a policy restricting migration out of rural areas or encouraging or forced migration as you put it but I think that policies should rather focus on reaping the benefits that come with rural urban migration instead of restricting and trying to minimize the cost and the cost obviously you mentioned them related to the impact on loss of labour and what of you so I think it is a relevant paper and as pointed out if you bring some theoretical flare into it and then trying to be much more specific in terms of the focus of the paper at least you can carry the reader trend also to be able to make an impact in terms of policy direction thank you very much