By Jacob Burrus, Ethan Koehler & Fernanda de Barros Dias

January 6, 2013

PHOTOS: CLICK HERE

We started the morning at 8 a.m. and went to a safari farm outside of Tibagi. Itay’s mineral water well and purification plant is located there and has a 2% fee assessed by the government. The farm is 1200 hectare, and 400 of that is preserved. They have 170 head of Red Angus cattle from Rio Grande do Sul. We started off by seeing a lot of antelope and deer on the safari preserve. The guide, Romeu, walked through the pens whistling and calling out in Portuguese to bring in the deer. He seemed to have magical powers over the animals as he does everything on the safari farm. We decided he needed his own TV show. We then moved to the central area and were greeted by about 20 llamas, a camel, a horse, javali, turkeys, emus, peacocks, macaws, parakeets, toucans, a baby ocelot, tortoises, an ass, coati, owls, and ponies. Our guide then took us over to see the lions, Simba & Nala, and her 22-day old cub. Jacob got to give Nala a good scratching behind the ear. Next we saw the two tigers, Gao and his mate. They don’t have a cub yet, and they must be kept separate because the 3 ½ year old female has not yet been in heat.

After lunch at the safari house, we drove to Ivo’s family farm. The farm we visited had been in the family since 1921. On the specific location we visited, there were 7500 acres of grain. All of his planted grain was conventional for human consumption. He planted corn, soybeans, dry beans, white oats, wheat, and barley. He planted Pioneer corn and Embrapa soybeans. His wheat makes an ingredient used in Brazilian Kit-Kat Bars. He had 18 tractors, 8 combines, 2 sprayers, 4 planters all of the John Deere brand. Ivo employs 40 people to help him with his day to day operations. After leaving the field we went to a pasture to learn about his beef cattle. He had 450 head of Brahma, Red Angus, Charlais, and blends of the trio. Castrolanda and a veterinarian have partnered with Ivo to transplant embryos from dairy cattle into the beef cattle. They are doing this so that there are more dairy cattle being born as this will help increase milk production for Castrolanda Co-Op (which is experiencing a significant increase in demand). Ivo stores some of his own crop and uses it to feed his animals. He harvests at a very high moisture, 28-30%, and dries it down to 15%. Each bin holds 15 tons of grain and he has 8 of these bins. Corn is the only crop that he buys new seed every year. Every other crop he grows is 80% planting of the previous year’s crop. He also raises 3500 head of sheep and has a 750 head per month turnover. This is because he buys nearly anything people sell to him and after fattening them up, sells them at a high value to the market. He wants to expand this branch of his operation and increase concentration on his farm so that he can build a distribution center.

We then traveled back to the hotel in Tibagi. Ivo treated us to dinner and right after dinner the power went out. We finished dessert and were surprised outside by a drum and dance circle that was similar to some of the traditional singing and dancing during the Brazilian Carnaval Festival. Most of us got into the circle and danced around with the beat. It was a great to experience the culture of the country in such a unique fashion.

In our down time and on the bus, we tend to get bored. In this time we have been giving each other animal nicknames in Portuguese. We couldn’t think of a better day to talk about our animal nicknames than today. Here’s the list!