Home

Arrived home on Friday after a few long days of driving, areoplanes and airports. Good to come home to lots of green grass and fat cows. Renee has done such as good job I will have to go away more often. Now I need to start planning for my individual study program, which at this stage I will head off in July.

Superstars

When we arrived at one of our visits this week we became a bit suspicious as soon as we pulled up. It didn't take long to realise we were out numbered nearly 2 to 1. Bayer Crop Science, who had coordinated a lot of the visits had organised some PR work and had brought along the TV and newspaper to do some articles. Dave and Steve stood up to the task, although they were pushed in the right direction. The next morning in the lift at the motel this random bloke turns to Steve and says 'You are from Australia aren't you, I just saw you on TV' . Good on You Fellas - hopefully the interpreter got the message right and you did Australia proud. Maybe if I had my Aussie shorts on they would have picked me?

Brazilia

Brazil are the second largest producer of Soya Beans in the world. It seems to be the preferred crop to grow here as the export market is quite strong compared to corn. In the last 20 years production has tripled and the area sown has only increased by 5%. This is quite impressive and is largely due to new varieties and no till. One farm we visited was cropping 4700 ha. 4000ha was Soya beans and of the 4000ha, 90% was GM. The other was corn and beans.

This photo is at a research station 'Embrapa'. They are running a project that covers exactly my topic. There is quiet a bit of interest here in intergrating livestock and cropping systems. This project has also added forestry into the mix. They are basically doing what we call Alley farming. The trees in the background are 2 years old and will be harvested when they are 5 yr old.

Yesterday was a good day for me. Highly relevant to what we do at home and my study topic as well. This is a crop of Pioneer Hybrid Seed Corn. Similar to our system - 2 male rows and 4 females. Only difference is they have 100ha not 15 like me. Detassling is still done by hand (over 100 people). Opportunities like this are possible when labour is cheap I guess.

The sunsets on Brazil today and we are off to Uraguay for the last leg of our Global Focus Program. Brazil has been fantastic, probably my favourite country so far. Last night we had dinner at the Residence of the Australia Embassy with the First Secretary and the Australia Ambassador Neil Mules. You have to pinch yourself at times like this and just realise how lucky we are to have opportunities such as this through Nuffield.