The 13 Canadians, including four Manitobans, who have been in Nepal for the last two weeks for a Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFGB) learning tour are getting ready to begin their trek home. The group wrapped up its series of project tours and farmer community visits yesterday, and will begin the trek home to Canada Friday.

Golden West reporter Betty Sawatzky, from Killarney, has been filing reports during the entire excursion, and connected with Manitoba/Northwestern Ontario Regional Rep Gordon Janzen who is part of the tour. She asked him to offer a few thoughts on what he saw during their time in Nepal.

"We've seen some real impact of the work, especially I'm thinking about some of the interactions we had with farmers," Janzen shared. "It's just been amazing to see the diversity of food production that farmers have on very small tracts of land and very difficult conditions. Some of the land is on very sloped mountain sides, and it's just an incredible contrast to the the big farm tracts of land we have in Manitoba."

Gordon JanzenGordon Janzen takes a moment during a stop in Nepal

Janzen took a moment to highlight a couple of stories that had particular impact on him.

"In one of the MCC (Mennonite Central Committee Canada) supported projects, there's both health and sanitation training, but also agriculture and livestock training," he explained. "One story we heard was from one of the women who had four children, and her oldest was raised before she had any the the health and nutrition training. She was asked how had the training made an impact and she started to cry, because the impact that nutrition and health training had made an impact in the life of her younger children. We got a sense of how that has really impacted families having better nutrition, and also being able to increase their production on their land, that's been a real impact for many of these small landholder farmers."

You can listen to more of Gordon's conversation with Betty, below.

- With files from Betty Sawatzky -