By Amelia Martens and Erica Weng
January 5, 2013
Our 6:30 a.m. wake-up call felt extra early this morning, as many of us are having a tough time adapting to the time change. Many of us have a hard time falling asleep, like our internal clocks are still wired to the central time zone.
We departed the hotel at 7:30 a.m. for another farm visit. The farmer and his family farm in three different locations and have approximately 3,000 total acres, in addition to 230 sows. The farmer (Bernardo Bouwman) plants corn, soybeans, and dry beans in the summer, and black and white oats and wheat in the winter. He has eight employees for the grain operation and five for the swine side. He discussed his crop inputs with us and how he stores his grain. The farmer did not have any storage on his farm, so it was shipped off-site. When asked if he’d considered putting storage on his farm, he said that off-site storage has worked well for him, so he hasn’t given on-site storage much thought.
A John Deere man (we were in his machine shed, and most of the equipment was indeed green), the farmer said his brother only runs red machinery (CASE IH). All of the corn the farmer planted was Pioneer. Eighty percent of his soybeans were GMO and 20 percent were conventional. In addition, he also invited us to visit his office. We were impressed by his office because everything there is tidy. He also shared his family history and pictures with us during the office visit.
The farmer had three children, two girls and a boy. The oldest girl was in college at Fatec, studying precision agriculture. She spoke English very well and spent six months in the United States studying in Orlando during high school.
The Bouwman family also invited us to visit their house. We were excited about it because this was the first Brazilian family home that we visited. Their house is beautiful. In addition, we had Fanta (orange soda) and coconut cookies in the farmer’s house. Their hospitality was so kind and we were all a bit sad to leave.
After the farm visit, we visited a supply store of the Castrolanda Cooperative. It was similar to a mini U.S. Rural King store.
Our tour guide, Nadiel, gave us a tour of the Castrolanda Cooperative. Here, we learned about seed production and how fertilizer and seed are distributed to farmers. One of the key takeaways from this visit was that GMOs and conventional seed are kept separate, as non-GM seed receives a better premium.
We ate lunch at the Dutch Windmill owned by Castrolanda. The windmill was created in celebration of Castrolanda’s Jubilee (50th anniversary) in 2001. It was 10 stories tall, and had replica flour-making grinders and pulleys for the flour-making process. Nadiel explained to us that the windmill will have another addition on it, as soon as they raise enough money for it.
During the afternoon, we visited the dry beans business unit of Castrolanda. We learned about the entire process of ensuring quality of the beans, to drying and storing them, to cleaning them, and then packaging them. The dry beans business is relatively new. This division of Castrolanda opened on November 30, 2012. Their first bags of beans will be marketed at the end of next week. So we got to see the product before it hit the market!
This business is expanding as well, and within the next year they will be preparing, packaging, selling, and distributing pre-cooked beans, in addition to selling beans in bulk and in small (one kilogram) size bags. As our ultimate goal as a NAMA team is to create a marketing plan, Castrolanda was kind enough to share their marketing plan for the dry beans unit with us. We enjoyed the opportunity to ask questions about various aspects of their marketing plan.
After the visit, the manager provided coffee and snacks for us. Nadiel introduced us to Brazilian milk. The size of their milk containers is much smaller than the milk in the U.S, because their refrigerators are small and cannot store gallon-sized milk. Brazilian milk tastes very good and we finished the whole box.
We arrived back at the hotel around 5 p.m. and had a break until 8. We went to the Country Club in Ponta Grossa that Fernanda’s parents belong to and had appetizers, supper at 10:30, and dessert. It was a great evening and we were able to meet many of Fernanda’s Brazilian friends and some of her family.