Dear all,
Thank you very much for the comments shared so far and thank you also to all of those who participated in last week’s webinar.
I would like to take this opportunity to tackle some of the questions that were left unanswered.
On the question posed by Holly Tripp regarding the gender implications along the pulses value chain, I think that this touches on many different dimensions. Women are often responsible for growing legume crops. Sometimes if a pulse becomes a cash crop men become more involved, but generally, pulses are planted and tended by women, and processed and stored by women. Therefore, women are usually most interested in information about how to grow pulses, and how to process them.
Unfortunately, on the questions by Jaime Pizarro and Tim Gill on where farmers could best acquire seeds for growing pulses and on who is doing research on pest-resistance, I have no exact answers. Maybe someone in the audience knows more on this and would like to share it with the rest of us? For the time being I’d like to share with you the link to a very good pest management technology resource for cowpea, http://www.iita.org/tamo-manuel
I look forward to your ideas on how to make pulses more appealing to the consumer and the producers.
Best regards
Sieg
Sieg Snapp