This summary report was provided by the ruralwomeninspain@yahoogroups.com discussion group c/- of Karolee Wilson, Australian Women in Agriculture member.

1. is now one of the central objectives on the rural development agenda. The gender "strategy," with which all the different phases of policies formulated from that perspective must be imbued, is for rural women to work collectively against gender subordination and to claim the labour, political and cultural rights belonging to them.

2. Gender inequality hampers not only the personal development of women and men but also the development of countries themselves, and it strangles any chances there might be of palliating the world's serious problems of poverty and food insecurity. The feminisation of poverty and social exclusion has a special impact on rural women, above all in countries with a lower level of human development.

3. Access to food is intimately related with gender issues. Despite rural women's undeniable contribution to the supply and making of food, producing 50% of all the food grown in the world, rural women themselves as a collective are still especially vulnerable to the drama of hunger.

4. The globalisation processes we are witnessing today form part of a deep-reaching transformation of world economics and politics, which affects not only nations and their policies but also the living and working conditions of all human beings, even in the remotest of rural villages.

Because rural women are especially hard-hit by gender inequalities and discrimination, they can be especially hurt by globalisation in countries with a lower degree of human development, where such processes may sharpen social inequalities between classes, genders and ethnic groups. From the standpoint of some rural women, a critical analysis of globalisation would seem to be needed. It is therefore proposed that policy attention be focused on the definition and application of a constructive agenda for world justice, where equal opportunities for women and men are considered a fundamental principle. This is not a matter of being for or against globalisation; the question is how to act within globalisation itself.

5. Full integration of gender-related aspects in development programs is essential for palliating food insecurity and reducing poverty in countries where that is a problem and for designing an environmentally-friendly agricultural system that can provide healthful foods.

6. From the worldwide standpoint, important strides may be said to have been made in rural women's civil and political rights, but headway must also be made in terms of their economic, social and cultural rights, which is where women can find access to and control of productive resources and gain empowerment. In some countries rural women must deal with additional difficulties when trying to gain access to such elementary resources as land, water and loans, simply because they are women.

7. It has become clear that rural women need to have a heavier presence in decision-making, agricultural matters and all other forums where political guidelines are laid out. Women's associations play a major role in the achievement of these aims.

8. Women farmers' role and rights deserve to be respected and supported by the nations and societies to which they belong. Women who farm, be it by choice or by necessity, must be held in the same esteem as their male counterparts and consulted as equals about farm product production and trade and about farm production methods for the sustenance of human health, international prosperity and the global environment.

9. The woman/environment/sustainable development paradigm, which feeds on the influences of a wide variety of theories and is based on women's closeness to nature, has gradually taken on increasing importance. Although the paradigm is controversial, women's relationship with the ecosystems that support them does tend to be different from men's.

Thanks to their special knowledge of cultivation systems, seed varieties, soil types, water management, medicinal plants, diverse uses for the forest and so on, rural women fulfil an essential function in the sustainable use of natural resources and food. Bio-diversity, the conservation of phytogenetic resources and the maintenance of agro-ecosystems depend largely on women's knowledge.

10. The achievement of sustainable development, the 21st century's greatest challenge, will only be possible if gender-sensitive approaches are incorporated in the planning, execution and evaluation of public policies on the gender issue.

11. Many rural women live with one foot in the traditional role of supporting the family and the other in the role of family farmhand. The family farm is a fuzzy area, conceptually speaking, where raising the family and raising the crops often go hand-in-hand. Women work full-time, but their work is not recognized socially and does not appear in official statistics. It might therefore be termed invisible work.

12. The question of women's legal status in agriculture lies at the root of the problem of professionalisation. Possession of clear formal legal status opens windows not only to acknowledgement and self-esteem for women, but also to autonomy on the job, empowerment in daily life and representation in farmers' professional organizations, where the norms are primarily masculine-oriented.

13. Millions of poor women of the world still have no access to new information technologies, despite IT's importance for distance learning in rural areas. It is therefore considered necessary for rural women to become involved in understanding and using information technologies.

14. Women farmers have to receive more training if the future of farming is to be ensured. Efforts to educate rural women not only can increase agricultural productivity in developing countries but also will help significantly to improve health and nutrition in families and to reduce the grave problems of AIDS in many rural areas.

15. Agricultural extension and research systems must strive harder to involve rural women in research. Such involvement would make it easier to equip rural women with the technology and knowledge they need and thus to definitely advance in the achievement of world food security.

16. Progress must be made collecting and analysing data broken down by sex and linking those data to significant socio-economic variables to evaluate the importance of rural women in socio-economic structures.

17. Rural women provide a guarantee of the necessary territorial equilibrium, while they are also the underlying support for the diversification of economic activities.

18. Rural women have been proven to play an important role in the construction of the new rural society, and their participation in the model of multifunctional, sustainable family farming called for in the new common agricultural policy has been proven to be indispensable.

19. The following proposals have been made to improve the situation of rural women for the future:

a) Their work must be recognized and measured in economic macro indicators.

b) Real joint ownership of family farms must be increased so women and men can enjoy the same rights.

c) Access to elementary resources such as water, land and funds must be facilitated; this goal will prove evasive unless women are empowered.

d) Emphasis must be laid upon education, so that women can take advantage of the opportunities stemming from the changes happening in the farming and livestock-raising sector.

e) Innovative activities must be outlined within the framework of local development.

f) New demands for urban products and services must be heeded, but not at the cost of the needs and acquired rights of women living in the rural environment.

g) The service sector must be developed in rural areas; it is a very important sphere where new sources of employment are generated.

h) Rural women's social participation in their environment must be developed through farm product associations and groups, local action groups, rural development centres, professional agrarian organizations, etc.

i) Incentives must be provided to support farming systems run by women and to

encourage women to remain in rural areas.

In conclusion, it may be stated that developing countries have not held genuine access to the phenomenon of globalisation. Actually, it could even be said that nowadays full access to a globalised market is what is making the difference between rich countries and poor ones. The serious lack of resources and access to technology accentuates the inequality between rich and poor and affects women more than men, especially women living in rural environments, where it is even harder to gain access to resources. These things make it nearly impossible to talk about sustainable development in the less-developed countries.

Much has been said about the role of women, especially the women who live in rural environments. Their very important work in plant species conservation, food security and, in short, the sustainable use of resources and the achievement of peace among different peoples has been made clear.

Therefore investing in rural women is fundamental, as a very important way of alleviating the poverty and social inequalities crippling us today. This type of measure will in turn help the resources earmarked for introducing gender mainstreaming in the national policies of the less-developed countries to reach their objectives.

Wincott is a network for all women involved both directly and indirectly in the Australian cotton industry, offering an alternative opportunity for them to increase their knowledge and develop their skills. The network caters for all levels of knowledge and confidence, from women who wish to increase their knowledge of cotton growing and the cotton industry through to women who may wish to undertake a broader role within the industry or in the wider agricultural sector. Wincott activities provide long term benefits and foster mainstream participation. The network is cost effective and uses existing industry structures and a wide range of resources to achieve its aims and objectives..

Cotton growers need to make weather or climate related management decision all the time. Although we have some scientific basis to forecast the season ahead, most cotton growers make only limited use of our current understanding of climate variability, seasonal predictability and projected future climate trends. Primary producers in Queensland and NSW are familiar with ENSO (EI Nino - Southern Oscillation) based seasonal climate forecasts. Close interaction with the cotton industry has revealed that frequently the key issue is not the question 'how reliable are these forecastsΓ' but rather 'how can I use this information to improve overall risk management and hence my economic and environmental performanceΓ' This important distinction highlights that the bottleneck for climate risk management is riot necessarily our understanding of climatic phenomena and their degree of predictability, but rather a lack of knowledge and understanding about how to transform this information into 'actionable climate knowledge

Parkes Agricultural Consultancy Pty Ltd was employed by Sundown Pastoral Company Pty Ltd to manage the farming enterprises at &quote;Keytah&quote; 38 kilometres west of Moree in July of 1997. It is to this enterprise that these proceedings relate. When I was initially asked to prepare a paper on this topic I thought it would be an easy assignment to relay what it is that we do to achieve consistently high yields. Endeavouring to be both precise and concise about the specifics of almost everything we do or have done over the past six years, is almost a contradiction in terms. I will, therefore, attempt to confine this paper to the overall management issues pertaining to our production, rather than getting into the complexities of what we are doing with varieties, plant spacing, nutrition, irrigation, field design, agronomy, cropping systems, etc. Whilst these are all exceptionally important in producing the most we can out of our farming system, the interests of time and space will not allow the detail required or these topics here. Further to this is the mass of information that we are all subject to at a conference of this nature and I, for one, have always struggled to ingest and digest the information that is directly relevant to me. Important things to me have always stuck in my mind better when referred to in an amusing or interesting way. So please forgive my indulgence in offering to you some of the &quote;Pearls of Wisdom&quote; that have assisted me in management over many years

The talks presented at the Beltwide cotton conference which will have the greatest impact on researchers, and the Australian cotton industry as a whole, will be the new transgenic insecticidal packages of MXB-13 from Dow Agroscience and VIP from Syngenta, along with the herbicide resistance packages of Roundup Ready Flex from Monsanto and LibertyLink from Bayer. While some of these products may never make up significant portions of the Australian cotton crop, others will. Hopefully in the next few years these products can be evaluated and the value of each to the Australian cotton industry be determined.

In terms of non-patentable concepts presented at the conference, the individual internode distance (IID), which was presented by Dr Tom Kirby from Delta & Pine land, may have a use for growers and consultants monitoring cotton crop development in Australia. Dr Kirby proposed a graph which showed the theoretical IID value at each stage of the crop's development. As crops became stressed the fell away from this curve (ie the IID became smaller). This could be a useful tool for Australian growers to identify a stress very shortly after it occurs and allow them to hopefully alleviate it before it is too late and yield adversely affected.

I don't believe that any information presented at the conference would have benefits specifically for the northern Australian cotton research project. Rather, the information is just as relevant to the traditional cotton growing areas in northern NSW and Queensland as it is to northern Australia. In particular, technology such as the insecticidal gene technologies should have a dramatic impact in both areas. I found the talks on cotton yield and yield composition the most relevant to my research and interests. As a result, there are other measurements related to yield composition in cotton, such as and possibly surface area, as well as the fruiting position that I will now be taking.

The past year has been a challenging one for the Cotton R&D Corporation. The appointment of five new Directors and a new Chair in November was possibly the most significant change the Corporation has seen since being established in October 1990. Despite this, and thanks to the efforts of Corporation staff and all directors new, continuing and retiring, the transition has been smooth. The Board is now looking forward to continuing to build the research program on the strong foundation developed during the past 10 years. The changes to the Board membership and advice from the Federal Government in December regarding revised priorities for rural Research and Development Corporations gave the Corporation an opportunity to revisit its major planning document, the Strategic Plan 1998-2003. Extensive consultation with industry has shown that the content of the Plan is sound and will deliver genuine benefits to the Australian cotton industry. In order to meet its obligations to all stakeholders, the Corporation has revised the structure of the Plan into a more clearly defined Outcome/Outputs framework. The revised framework will allow the Corporation to improve and simplify its planning and reporting. Australia’s cotton industry supports many thousands of people in rural and regional areas and directly contributes more than $1.5 billion to the national economy. Our role is to enable the industry to continue to be strong and profitable for the long-term, by addressing issues of natural resource management for sustainability, issues of production for profitability and issues of positive and negative off-farm impacts for the community. The Corporation remains focussed on reducing dependence on traditional pesticides, continuing the development of Integrated Pest Management principles, improving water use efficiency and developing of sustainable farming systems.

The overall aim of our work in this project was to develop optimum strategies for refuge crop management. In particular, the project aimed to : 1). Demonstrate the efficiency of coverage of Bt cotton by moths from on-cotton sources, and the degree of cross-mating of moths from different plant hosts; 2). Evaluate methods to enhance the production of Helicoverpa within refuge crops; 3). Continue monitoring of landscape-scale changes in the abundance of Helicoverpa spp.; 4) Conduct field trials to evaluate novel refuge crop options. The 4thaim was added to the project for its 3rd year, when Dr Mary Whitehouse joined the project from her previous work on mirid pest management

Fusarium wilt of cotton was first identified in Australia on the Darling Downs in 1993. The diseasehas now been found in most cotton producing areas in Queensland and New South Wales.-

Participation in the cotton industry to facilitate the adoption of IPM Facilitating the adoption of IPM through providing support to industry has been the key focus of this project. The project team has been involved in a wide range of activities that have, in combination, met this objective.

The latest development in the resourcing of the D&D program is the appointment of Regional Development Officers, who as the title suggests, have been appointed to the each of the major cotton growing valleys.