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