Coffee

I love coffee. So it was great to see where 35% of the worlds coffee is produced. These guys go for the quality as opposed to the quantity market. So they direct market all the produce. One of their customers is the Queen.

They have cuppers. These guys test the coffee before it's harvested and lets the managers know when to pick, they test every load from the field and grade it and they also custom blend for customers. What they do is pick a small sample of berries, dehull, dry(in a very small dryer similar to the large ones) roast, smell, sip and spit out the liquor.(The sound they make is similar to Hannibal Lector). Then they score it. We all had a go at the sipping and I'm sure it will find it's way onto you-tube for your entertainment.

We where then treated to some great coffee. Cheers

Bus From HELL!!!!!

So far we have gone 1000 km in the bus from hell. It has airbag suspension which doesn't work. which means every pot hole sends the shock waves through the bus. New transport tomorrow along with a new back.

San Paulo

Here are the stats. 21 mil people living in San Paulo of the 192 mill in Brazil. Brazil is 80% urbanwith 165,000 people with more than $1m in the bank and 50% of the population is middle class.Ther is a big divide between middle class and poverty.

70% of the power is Hydro and most of the cars run on ethonol which is 55% of the price of petroium. It’s ag sector is the second largest in the world and is only 5% of GDP. It has 220m hectares of undeveloped pasture of which 100,000 ha have the potential for intensive Ag. About50, 000 ha is curently intensivly farmed. To get a bank loan you have to pass an enviromental and social audit and the biggest limiting factor is transport. Which is crap, really crap?

However, San Paulo was great. The Brazilian love of life is easy to see. They embrace there artand culture which you can see all over the city in the form of gaffiti. Business see it as a honar to have there walls painted, and most of the art is very clever. But the city also has a dark side, where there is a big devide between rich and poor there is violence. This is evident in the police who wear bullet proof vests and are seen everyware. Like the poverty, you findyourself steppingover homeless people on the streets and you are warned to stay with the crowds at night.

But the people of San Paulo love their city and love the beach. We as Australians seem to fit right in, it's the only country Ive visited so far I feel at home in. Apart from the bullet proof vests!!!

Mexicana Lounge

Introducing a bit of Aussie culture to the Mexicans. Rowan is our official ambassador. Seen here dressed in his finest sharing a sixpack with Graham.

Pyrimids

Dave and Roe standing atop of the sun god Pyrimid just out of Mexico City. It's a colosal structure and at 2500 metres above sea level is quite a climb. The pyrimid in the backgroud is the Moon gods. We went there, but had trouble getting through all the hawkers. Anyone want a sungod Tequila bottle?

Wheat

I’m all inspired now that I have been to CIMMYT. Not a bad wheat crop this one. Should be around 10 T. Too much to talk about in this blog, my head is exploding with numbers and ideas. All I can say is that this is the Mecca to wheat and you should try and make the pilgrimage if you can.

p.s. Do you like the hat?

Salt

There is a reoccurring theme as we travel through the irrigation areas of both California and Mexico and that is the salt. When quizzed on the subject, and we quizzed everyone, the answer is the same, no problem we will just flush it down with more water. I’m no hydrologist but I’m sure that is not the answer. The white strip in the photos is the salt. No Problemo.

Food in Mexico

Despite all the warning about the food, it’s very good. Today we had a local delicacy of pork tortillas. Now it’s not the pork that’s special, it’s the way it’s cooked. They get the pork cut it up and place it into a boiling tub of pig fat, when it’s cooked they serve it up. It tastes great and I’m glad I ate it before they showed us the kitchen. Needless to say I won’t be having dinner tonight. I’m showing you the pic of the crew outside by the sign, you’ll feel ill at the kitchen pic.

Travelling in Mexico

I’m sure there are road rules in Mexico; it’s just that most people just ignore them. This is one of the road side prayer houses scatted along the roads. I’m not a religious man but I was tempted to stop.

CIMMYT

Ive seen some large trials in my time. Some have been as big as one ha. CIMMYT the world leading wheat breading program has 100ha of 1m x5m trial plots. The variety of wheats under cultivation is hard to comprehend. The total program including agronomic trials is 400ha.

If your growing wheat anywere in the world chances are it came from here. See http://picasaweb.google.com/regertonwarburton/Cimmyt#

Mexico

Went shopping for the girls today. Do you think they'll like them?

San Francisco

Yep still alive. That's Alcatraz in the background.

Classic San Fran view.

Nice area down by the pier. Very tourist driven. Off to Mexico tomorrow morning.

Water and Energy

Today revolved around the two most important topics in CA. Water & Energy. Monterrey have invested heavily in thetreatement plant to turn sewage into portable water. At the moment it is being used to irrigate crops but pressure will mount as water restrictions come into force this summer.

We also visited two guys behind a bio diesel plant. There now seem to be consensus that to have a sustainable source of bio diesel you can't interfere with the food supply. It has to be a by product and America has plenty of that.

More Dairy

This dairy milks 6000 cows 365 days per year 24 hours per day producing 7 truckloads of milk per day.

There are 2000 dairymen in California with an average size of 600 cows. That makes 1.2 million dairy cows in CA, the largest producing state in the US.

There so good at it they have oversupplied the local market and are now going broke. There cost of production is so high they can't even compete with Aus & NZ

Boswell

J.G. Boswell Company farms 106,000 ac in the Sacramento Valley. 24,000 ac of processing tomato's yielding about 56 t/ac and about 70,000 ac of Cotton. All fed from the river of water flowing through the farm.

This is the tomato planting machine. They run these 24/7 for three months.

When there picked they are processed in their own factory producing around 590,000 kilograms of tomato paste. Each one of those boxes is 1 tonne of paste. They go on forever. They can last for up to 3 years in these boxes.

I counted 50 harvesters.

Fun in the valley

Today's first visit was to see the miracle Paloma tree that claims to grow to 60 ft in 3 years and generate enough power to run 1800 homes. Not sure about this one. If it's too good to be true it probably is.

A sheep farm in the valley was not what I expected. They run 4700 ewes, employ 7 full time staff and lamb over a 5 month period. Labour is cheap in CA.

Almonds

The Sacramento Valley produces 100% of Americas almonds and 80% of the worlds. The picture above is one of the husk mountains from the processing.

There's quite a bit to processing them. Their sorted on colour, size, type and removed if they had a scratch on them.

And then packaged and sent to the world. The scale is mind boggling. In fact the whole day has been doing my head in with the size and scale of food production.

Fresno

The big blue part of this map is the Sacramento Valley in California. It's bloody big and it produces more than half of the nations food. One of the presenters today indicated that the nation was so reliant on the valley that it only has about 7 days of food in the system to feed the nation at any one time.

The valley is very flat. It has 100 feet of top soil and an unmetered supply of bore water. Even in the town there is no metering of the water. Thus the lawns and gardens look great.

But water is their number one issue. They have had some dry years and the governments and environmental groups are coming down hard. Which will win, food or the environment.

This one is for the wheat growers. They grow a bit of wheat. It averages around 10t/ha. If you look closely you can see the start of the centre pivot in the distance.

My kind of town

Chicago board of trade today. We got access to the trading floor and where there at opening. It was great, lots of activity at the start and then not much. Just like you see in the movies with lots of hand waving and calling out, great to see in the day of electronic commerce The city was also good and I would have liked to have seen more. Off to Fresno tonight.

I've been Busy

I havn't blogged or even communicated much over the past few days which is due in part to the hectic schedule we have had imposed, 7am starts and 10.30pm finishes don't help but most of the blame should be put at the Irish lads feet. We have had a great time and formed some lifelong friendships and I look forward to visiting them all in the future.

Gettysburg battle ground while not a moving experience for me it must be for the Americans. 160 monuments and a huge visitor centre. 1.4 million visitors per year. It was great to visit and gave me an incite into the American civil war I had not had before.We also as part of the tour had a leadership forum from which we all came away with the words ADAPT, INNOVATE, OVERCOME

Intensive dairying is some thing I have only seen in the UK and the US. This is the most intensive I have seen yet. Cattle fed indoors 365 days of the year and automated milking. I not shore how I feel about this. I found it very confronting.

Mushrooms. I love them. But after visiting the farms I know I'm not going to grow them. The composting stinks and picking them is done by hand. No thanks.

Washington

The Lincoln memorial was much bigger that I had imagined through the images I had seen on TV and movies. In fact I really had had no idea of the size and scale of the monuments in Washington. As you travel down Pennsylvania avenue from capitol hill to the white house you can’t help but feel the sense of power and wealth they are trying to convey.

The war memorials where also vast in both size and number. The Vietnam memorial was moving as it was just names and showed no reference to the glory of war. My favourite was the Korean memorial. On a foggy morning or in the snow the positions of their bodies and the expressions on their faces convey all the horrors of war.

The Irish Nuffield Scholars have formed a boy band. They have been practising at the local karaoke bar and will soon be ready to hit the road. From left to right Bill, Kevin, Julian, Bill, Kevin.