Home at Last

January 14, 2014

We made it back home!! We were a little worried if they were going to let all of us back in the country, but nothing was stopping us from getting back to South Dakota...and we went through 3 sets of TSA security and 2 sets of immigration to prove it.

We would like to thank all the families, friends, businesses, and organizations that have supported our international travels. Also, we would like to thank the SDSU Office of Study Abroad and the administration of SDSU that continues to encourage international opportunities. This is an experience that will live forever in all of us, and we couldn't do things like this without support.

Finally, we would like to thank Alejandro Casella, Miguel Villegas, and Ty Littau for all they have done in the organization of this trip. From setting up farm tours, getting us around the country, and making sure we always knew what we were ordering at restaurants, we could not have been in better hands.

It may be cold, but it is home, and we are happy to be here safe and sound.

January 13, 2014....Our Final Day in Argentina

January 13, 2014

It is slightly bittersweet but we had our last day in Argentina. It was such a beautiful day it was hard to believe we would soon be in the frigid air of South Dakota. We spent the day finishing up some last minute shopping in Buenos Aires, and we really stretched ourselves one last time on trying new cuisine and hit up the McDonalds....ok, so it is cheating a little bit, but it is interesting to see American lifestyles so far from home.

We then made the trip to the airport with our wonderful bus driver Miguel. Words can not express how important he is to us. He knows how to lighten the mood to make everyone laugh, and he is always full of surprises. Most of all, he is the only one brave enough to drive a bus in this crazy driving country!!! We will miss him dearly.

This has been an amazing opportunity. We have been able to see a very different culture and gain life-long experiences that have changed several of us forever. Thank you South America, we have enjoyed the ride!

Stacy M. Scramlin

January 12, 2013

January 12, 2013

It was a gorgeous day here in Uruguay. Today was our last full day in South America so several of us spent the day touring the town and enjoying the atmosphere. Colonia is a great place to shop and has several historical landmarks, and several artist galleries. The cafes and restaurants have lots of outside seating that is great to enjoy a meal and people watch. It is quite a bit cooler here than in Argentina and there is a constant breeze coming off the river, so it is really enjoyable.

Then we caught our ferry back to Buenos Aires on a very big, very full ferry. It was definitely a lot more turbulent than the ride over, but we all landed ok. It was such a relief to see Miguel in a sea of people picking up passengers. Then it was back to our hotel for our last night in Argentina. It has been an amazing trip, and we will be on our way home soon!

Stacy M. Scramlin

January 11, 2014

January 11, 2014

Its been a beautiful day here in Uruguay.

We were all very excited to sleep in this morning. When we finally woke up we headed to rent mules to drive around Colonia. Colonia has two parts, the old city and the new city so we decided to take the cobblestone roads down to the old city to view the historic sights of Colonia. Driving the mules proved to be a challenge in a city with so many oneway streets and signs that are unfamiliar but we got around just fine. After touring for a while we stopped to see the lighthouse and the old entrance to the city. While half the students went to the lighthouse the others headed to the drawbridge. This drawbridge was once the only way into and out of the city of Colonia. Now there is only the bridge and a small portion of the wall left.

The lighthouse has 118 steps to the top and it was VERY windy up there. To get to the top some of the students had to overcome a fear of heights and crawl though a pretty small space but the view was definitely worth it. From the top you were able to see the Catholic Church which is the oldest church in Uruguay. You also had an amazing view of the river where a few boats were sailing and the rest of the beautiful town. A few students stopped at a local shop to get a few souvenirs. Next it was time to grab lunch. We found a nice shady restaurant near the old city wall with delicious grill ham and cheese sandwiches which came with many interesting toppings. Finally it was time to hop back in the mules and head to the beach!!

Needless to say we are all sunburn after spending a few hours swimming and working on our tans. The smarter ones of the group relaxed in the shade near the cafe. Although we we not technically swimming in the ocean we took advantage of the opportunity and had a great time.

Around seven we got back to our hotel and cleaned up for supper. We all enjoyed what was probably our last nice sit down meal of the trip before going back to our hotel to enjoy the air conditioning and get some rest.

We have found Uruguay to be much more tourist friendly than Buenos Aires. Many of the people speak English and no one has tried to run us over yet. We also got to see some fellow Americans today who were study abroad students from Ohio. Tomorrow we will be getting the last of our souvenirs in Uruguay and heading back to Argentina for our final night. This trip has been an amazing adventure for all of us. We have learned so much about ourselves and the culture here. Along the way we also became very close to each other and have made friends that will last a lifetime. As much as we all love this place, I think we are all ready to get back to the States. However, we will greatly miss our Argentine friends.

Deseray Ellsworth

January 10, 2014

January 10, 2014

Well, another day a different country in South America!  This morning we departed Argentina and made our way to Uruguay.  We traveled by ferry which took us roughly an      hour to reach Colonia.  It is also confirmed that Aaron still has a fear of water.

As usual, we got right off and took our first farm tour of Uruguay and the last of the trip!  We toured La Estanzuela, a research farm in Uruguay that is credited for being one of the most progressive operations in all of Uruguay.

The research farm is roughly 1200 hectares and was established in 1914.  Its a diversified farming operation that also does grazing trials on steers and on dairy cattle.  A majority of of there operation focuses on agronomy and crops however.

The agriculture of Uruguay as a whole is extremely progressive in nature.  Farmers are constantly looking for new and proven ideas to improve yield and profit on agriculture products.  It was very interesting to know however that the GMO soybean is actually what boosted there profit  margins in the agricultural field.

Additionally, they are top ten in the world in beef export, which considering there geographical area is extremely impressive.  Unlike Argentina, they are also much similar in terms of slaughter weight with the United States.

Honestly, Uruguay was night and day difference in agriculture to Argentina.  For one, they push very strongly for animal welfare, always trying to do better for the animal and there environment.  Secondly, and probably the most important is they have a government that strongly supports agriculture and is based around it.  Also, they are in better standing in terms of financial stability, partly to do with extremely low tax rates.

I personally feel they are a smaller scaled version of the United States.  Very similar in the way our government views agriculture and more progressive in how we operate.  Aside from  Uruguay being more diversified, I would definitely call them very similar.

We finished out a great day with an excellent meal at one of the local establishments and now get to prepare ourselves for a couple more nights!  Times winding down in South America!

Blake Eisenbeisz

January 9, 2014

January 9, 2014

Greetings once again from the big city! After a long car ride, we made it into Buenos Aires about 10:30 last night. We were all very tired and enjoyed having a tour later in the morning to start our our day.

Our first stop this morning was at Raciones Argentinas, a premix plant that specializes in rations for beef and dairy cattle. They operate solely in the cattle business sector and premix 80% beef cattle feed and 20% dairy cattle feed. The business sector took form in 2002 with the actual premix plant beginning operation for producers in 2007. The plant can prepare standard cattle ration formulations, but also can customize formulations based on recommendations from the on farm nutritionists. The plant operates under good management procedures such as strict safety protocols and having a clean facility. To avoid contamination from mad cow and other diseases, the company avoids using products from other cattle sources such as meat or bone meal. Raciones Argentinas has an excellent business strategy that enables them to have long term goals with their customers allowing them to help the customer out with any feed concerns along the way. The plant itself contains a formulation room which is where micro-ingredients are kept. Some commonly used micro-ingredients are Zinc and Rumensin, but only make up about 15% or the entire ration. The average batch size they mix ranges from 30-33 metric tons. Most of the premixes go out as a powder  instead of a pellet mainly because it is more expensive to pelletize rations in Argentina. They also use a fly control product to be used in October through March, when fly populations are high. Another interesting point is that they have no feed in a warehouse or on hand, every batch is made specifically to order by the producer or nutritionist's recommendation. The factory has no trucks on hand so delivery falls solely on the producer. The reasoning behind this is that owning trucks is complicated due to the powerful unions and road regulations. The winter months are the best as far as sales, and they see a slump during the summer months. The company is also required to keep records and feed samples for at least 6 months after they are shipped, as the company is inspected once a year. After our tour, we were all treated to a wonderful brunch.

Our second stop of the day was to the Buenos Aires Board of Trade. The trade floor contains only two pits; one for cereals like corn and wheat and one for legumes such as soybeans and sunflowers. The company made its appearance in 1854 and will celebrate its 160 anniversary this year. The trading floor, like in Chicago, is seeing a loss in face to face trading moving more to electronic. Our guide stated that more than likely it would move to entirely electronic sometime this year. To give you some perspective on the impact of electronic trading, this time last year a seat on the trade floor was worth around $100,000 U.S. dollars and now it is worth around $30,000 U.S. dollars. We calculated the prices per bushel that were at closing time, corn was trading around $4.00 with soybeans trading around $10.00. You may notice the soybeans being a bit low, but this is because of shipping/handling costs. This board of trade operates by watching the Chicago Board of Trade and sets prices somewhat parallel. After our visit, our tour guide took a picture of us to be put on the official website of the Buenos Aires Board of Trade! You can find it at www.bolsadecereales.com.ar and look under newsletter.

Tonight we are going out for one last meal with our gracious host, Alejandro. I think I speak for all of us when I say that he has gone above and beyond for making this trip memorable, comfortable, and educational. We are very exciting to ride the ferry into Uruguay tomorrow to see another aspect of agriculture.

Sincerely,
Tyler Vreugdenhil

January 8, 2014

January 8, 2014

Greetings from Argentina!

Today we have started our great journey back to Buenos Aires! Everyone is thrilled to be back on the bus for 8 hours jamming to "Timber" and "We Were Us"for the 20th time in two days. We are very thankful though that the radio on the bus has Bluetooth and we can connect our phones to it.

On our way to Buenos Aires we made two different pit stops at farms. The first farm was a combination of crops and feeder cattle. The farm name is La Travesia. The farm owns 4500 hectors and 1500 hectors of the land is rented. They said that 10 years ago the farm was only planted to alfalfa, slowly they had been trying to convert everything back to only crops and 3 years ago they started to have all the land in crops and none in grazing. That is how it has ben since then. The sand has some more dirt in it, on this farm. Wait, I should say the dirt as some less sand. Either way the soil is not as good as to what I am used to in Illinois. The farm uses a program called GIS, which is similar to precision agriculture, in the states. That is the first farm that we have visited that has used that much technology for crops. It was interesting that this farm uses a hybrid of wheat that has two heads on it when it rains enough. There is a set rotation for the crops. When it is sunflowers then it goes to wheat, corn goes to soybeans, and wheat goes to corn. While out in the bean field we were attacked by what we thought were honey bees. Turns out we were very wrong and they were a insect similar to a fly. But they did look just like a bee.

La Travesia also has a feed lot. It has a maximum capacity of 8000 head, when they started building it was supposed to be big enough to fit 20000 head. Plans changed and since they do not take out many loans down here because the interest rate is so high, they had to make it smaller because of the lack of funds. All the cattle produced from this feed lot is all for domestic market. They produce all of their own feed for the cattle and then whatever is left over is sold. Also they have a pen full of deer, when asked why they had them they said it was just for fun.

We loaded the bus for a short trip to eat lunch at a small town restaurant, we got lucky enough we did not have to try any more mystery meats. While at dinner the news was on T.V. and showed pictures of Chicago and Minneapolis with the snow and cold weather and it made everyone enjoy the warm weather that much more.  We noticed that the bus has been rather quite today more than the others, then we realized we didn't the famous comedian  Ty Littau with us anymore. Anyways we had plenty of laughs without him.

After traveling down the nice and smooth sand roads we arrived at what was out final farm tour in Argentina. Crazy how fast the time has gone! La Candelaria was the name of the place which is the largest feedlot in Argentina. They have 12000 hectors of crops and last year they chopped 4000 hectors for just silage! They said it took 50 days to make it all. It was 14 meters tall in the middle of the pile. I know that back home after a week of chopping I am tired of it, let alone 2 months of it!!! This year they did not have as much silage. The pile only reached 8 meters, which is still very impressive. They have a total capacity for 50000 head at one time. They sell 2000 head a week. As of right now they only have 34,000 head since it is summer. This year they bought the calves in June but since they did not have room for them at the time they kept them at the place to finish backgrounding them, they did pay for the pasture too. La Candelaria has 4000 cows and they feed all 4000 of those calves and buy the rest. There are 200 pens and roughly 12 meters squared for one calf in a pen. They feed three times a day and have 4 feed wages going, and two loaders going at all time. The average market weight is 380 kilos. Since all the calves on the farm go to Liniers they are used for domestic consumption. Which is why they are so light. The farm does not plan on expanding in the feed lot but hope to gain more land to be able to do more backgrounding.

After we enjoyed a nice coke and cookies, we loaded the bus once again to finish the last 5 hours to Buenos Aires! We all wanted to nap,  but since we took a short cut. Which yes, a short cut in Argentina means going down every bumpy back road you can find, just like back home! We had to wait a bit until we got on a nice paved road. After everyone got their naps in and in a better mood we continued to jam out and realized when we get home we should all try out for American Idol.

Hope every one is staying warm and haven't had too much trouble with the animals!

Much Love,
Anna Ohlwine

January 7, 2014

January 7, 2014

Well today was a very early start for us with having to leave the hotel by 7:45. We had two completely different stops and a long day ahead of us.

The first stop was with a co-op, the strongest in the La Pampa province, close to Santa Rosa. The co-op deals with both feedlot operations and crops. The co-op, which is around 60 years old, is composed of over 400 partners; 250 of those were regular partners, who were involved in the process of everything, and the rest were strictly just business partners who were more silent. The co-op has it's own type of elevator system which can hold around 40,000 tons of grain and fertilizer. The elevator was built around the railroad tracks that were used up until 2001. Near the elevator facility there is an auction area for the cattle. The co-op has 6 or 7 sales a year and takes a 3% from every sale whether it be a partners cattle being sold or a person not part of the co-op.

Along with visiting the co-op's elevator facility, we also got to visit one of the partnering farms. The farm was one that had been a partner for 13 years, however it has been running for almost 100 years. The farm had a feedlot and crops that are used for the consumption of the cattle. This feedlot has been different from others we have seen on the trip in the way it is used only 90 days out of the year in the winter. The feedlot, when full, can hold up to 1500 head of cattle. Since it is summer in Argentina, the cattle are currently grazing alfalfa fields. This operation uses an alfalfa crop 3-5 years for grazing before discing and replanting. They have 4 different lots that they rotate between leaving the cattle on for approximately 10 days on each lot so they can return to the original one every thirty days. The co-op uses its cattle for domestic consumption and exports. They export approximately 300 head at 520 kilos only to Europe. Because of the government restrictions on exportation it is very hard because they have to meet a certain quota for domestic consumption before being able to export any. In Argentina, bigger cattle are worth less than small animals, so the co-op sorts through the finished cattle and send the small ones for domestic consumption, but keep the larger ones to finish (around 22 months) for export. Where this farm is located, almost 85% of the soil is sand, but as hills get taller it is closer to 100%. Right now there is a drought and the area is suffering about 9 inches of water difference from 2013. They cannot irrigate because the ground water is to salty and to deep. Even if they were able to irrigate, there would not be enough water anyways. Like most farms in Argentina, the co-op contracts out all of its harvesting.

Our visit with the co-op ended with lunch at a small cafe. There some of us were introduced to some very interesting food including small intestine and kidney. That was my first time trying either and to say the least I pry will not ever do it again, but I'm glad I did anyways.

The second stop of the day was really unique because the farm was owned by an Alabama American rancher, Wat Johnson. He got into the Argentina land ownership around 10 years ago with a place to the left of his current farm, Flor de Lis. He sold the first and helped the owners of Flor de Lis at the time get out of a bad financial situation and then purchased the property. Flor de Lis is a yearlings production and cow-calf operation included in the partnership of "La Tregua S.A." which is a member of CREA. The farm is 4431 hectares large and looked more like it should be in the Savannah Desert with giraffes according to Ty. Flor de Lis does not feed there cows alfalfa and grain like other farms we have been to. The managers of the farm believe that natural grasses and a few other imported grasses are the best way to feed cows and calves until maturity to clave or slaughter. They are currently working on planting grasses that will last many decades,  are good sources of nutrients for the cows and calves, easy to maintain, and relatively inexpensive. If their grasses are not enough to finish out the calves they produce enough crops to make silage. This partnership was by far the most interesting in the fact that they did not believe in doing a lot of extra things to finish out their cows and calves. They are trying to show the Argentina government and the world that success can be reached with simple techniques.

Our farm and day ended with us joining Mr. Johnston and his workers at his place for some fresh butchered pig and talking about all kinds of things. A few of us were able to ride horse, some for the first time, and just relax for awhile also. We compared the U.S. to Argentina, talked about bull sales, and just enjoyed being able to speak to someone who farms in Argentina without much needing to be interpreted.

Well I hope that wasn't to long explanation of our days activities, but as you all know I've never been short of words. Stay warm and safe! See you all soon :)

Sincerely My Friends and Family,
Kasey Aasby