Jamuary 31 and February 1

On Tuesday we had an extremely interesting visit to a papaya and banana producer, again fruits that we aren’t use to seeing produced in the United States. The students had lots of questions and learned first hand about the planting and production of both fruits. They were able to compare and contrast the banana field from the previous day with the one today. The owner of Frutas was very good at explaining his farm and talking to the students. He had 450 employees. We saw the papaya packing plant first. Brazil has a problem with a fungus that causes black spots on the papaya. They are edible but they aren’t a first class fruit so they cannot be exported. Then we saw the papaya field and I think the students were surprised at the number of fruit per tree. This farm was so large they were harvesting papaya every day.





The banana farm was just amazing. The students could really see how bananas are harvested and how careful the farmer is with the bananas. It was interesting to see how the workers cut down the banana bunch. They notch the tree so that it leans, clear the leaves away from the bunch of bananas and then another person cuts the bunch where it carefully lands on another workers shoulder with a pad on it and then the bunch is hooked to a cable which carries it to the packing plant. The cable is throughout the field and the direction can be adjusted by the worker. A banana tree is grown with a grandparent, mother and daughter planted side by side because they only last for two to three years. The students even got a chance to slice a small bunch of bananas (like we would find in the store) from the actual full bunch cut from the tree. The original bunch may weigh up to 60 pounds. The bananas are then put in water to be cleaned and packed. The students also tasted fresh papaya and banana. Hmmmm good!!!! Very impressive farm. The rest of the day was spent traveling to Vitoria and we arrived at 9:00 pm.










Wednesday started with a visit to Vale do Rio Doce’s Port Facilities. We started at their sensory park which is open for the community to enjoy. Then we viewed a movie followed by a bus tour of the full port. This is the largest iron ore port in the world. We also saw one of four new ships that have been ordered by Vale. It is the largest freight ship in the world and called Vale Rio de Janiero. There are very few ports that are large enough to even dock the ship. The crew of a ship like this might be 110 people or so while the crew of the cruise ship that crashed off the shore of Italy was 1100. It had just finished unloading when we saw it. We were able to see the process of a port and movement of iron ore. We saw it moving through the system to the train. Vale is a small city within itself and very environmentally conscious.








Next we visited Garoto, Brazil’s largest chocolate processing factory and when merged with Nestle has 50% of the profit share in chocolate across the world. It was neat to see all the different chocolates made by Garoto and learn about the history of the company. No cameras were allowed but we saw the production of several different lines of chocolates, the wrapping and packaging and we also were able to taste several different kinds of chocolate candy. It was interesting to see how many different kinds some people were able to eat. We were able to visit their store after the tour.

Then we settled in for the trip to a small town outside of Rio. So far our bus travels have been fairly dull. No flooding, no rained out roads, no trees down in the road as in past years. I have been waiting for something to happen. We departed from Garoto about 5:00 pm with a predicted arrival time of midnight. The roads weren’t the best and then about 2:00 am we came to a very narrow overpass. The bus slowly moved through the passageway and crash!! We didn’t hit the sides but we hit the top, the bus could not get under the overpass. The commotion of hitting woke many of the students up (I was already awake). We had to carefully back out and turn around and find another road. We ended up arriving at the hotel in Petropolis at 4:25 am. We are currently on the bus heading towards Rio and we left at 8:00 am this morning.

More to come with the adventures of AZP Class 13.

The Beach!!! and Monday

It has been a very busy last few days. It ended up being a 20 hour road trip to get to the beach in Bahia on Sunday. We got there about 11:00 am and stayed until 6:00. It was a gorgeous beach and we had time to relax, sun bath (some got more sun than others), enjoy the ocean, and walk around to experience the culture of Bahia. Bahia is a different region in Brazil in that it is mostly all African American’s. There is not the diversity that you see elsewhere in Brazil. We also had dinner at a typical street restaurant where there were many more choices of juices. Fruits that we were unaware even existed. It was 11:00 pm before we got back to the hotel. You will have to ask the guys about their speedos. Great O-H-I-O’s!!






Monday we were up early and toured CEPLAC, a National Cocoa Research Center. We were able to see the process of making chocolate and even tasted a sample of 50% chocolate which is almost a premier chocolate. It was interesting to hear about the different uses of the various percentages of chocolate. We started in the cocoa fields and learned about the growth and disease of the plants. We opened up the pod and saw a gooey, slimy material around the cocoa bean. We tasted the gooey material and most actually broke open the bean and tasted the inside of the bean. It is the gooey material that makes white chocolate. I will have to say the sensory skills of students were active today. We then visited the lab that produces chocolate but it is focused on research rather than production.






After that we stopped at a sloth refuge center and were able to see the sloths up close. The curator was holding a 2 month old baby that lost it’s mother and was brought to the center and an older sloth who had lost a foot in the electric wires. They were enjoying being held by the curator. There were other sloths that we watched for a while and learned about their behavior, habits and habitat.





We then stopped at Biofabrica which produces papaya plants for the farmers and we learned the steps in starting a papaya plant from a cutting to the planting in the field. We also observed banana farm and learned a little bit about bananas. This farmer emphasized that bananas need a canopy of taller trees for protection and they did not like full sun.


Then we headed toward Teixeira de Freitas/BA arriving about midnight.

January 23 - 29

On January 24 we visited one of the largest dairy farms in Brazil located in Tapiratiba/MG. No pictures were allowed but it was quite a facility. The students asked lots of questions. They had their own brand name, Fazenda, and the students were able to process. They even tasted some COLD milk packaged at the farm. Some students liked it and others did not. It did taste different. In the afternoon we visited Cooxupe, a large coffee cooperative in Guaxupe/MG and a coffee farm. Between the two visits we observed the whole process of coffee production including planting, picking, drying, delivery to cooperative, grading and selection of coffee beans, more drying, storage and delivery to consumer. Specialty coffees are the next on agenda of the cooperative. You can see two students stepping up to experience coffee tasting and having the knack of swishing the coffee throughout the mouth to get the full taste and then spitting it out for the next taste. What about that O-H-I-O in the coffee field.







On Thursday a group of us stopped at lunch to see if we could find the monkeys at ESALQ. So far we had not seen them. Darcy left a banana and we stopped to get ice cream. We returned after the ice cream and they had found the banana and were eating. The students had a grand time feeding two bananas to several Tamerin monkeys.


Thursday afternoon the students had their written exam and then we left a little after 8:00 pm the long trip and drove all night before reaching Sete Lagoas/MG . We spent the day at one of Brazil’s EMBRAPA national research stations focused on sorghum, corn and millet. They are researching three types of sorghum with the tallest containing more sugar. We also saw corn plots. Then we were able to see fruits not found in Ohio or the U.S. – ­­­­­papaya, avocados and star fruits.










Saturday morning we visited a large integrated hog farm. They purchased the grand parents of the F1 generations and then bred, birthed piglets, fed them out, sent the males to market, kept those females they selected and sent the rest to market. He had 500 sows, 6100 total pigs and sent 50 hogs a day to be slaughtered. Those sent for slaughter came back to farm after slaughtering and the meat was processed and then sold to restaurants and industrial food companies. Brazil had 5-6 cuts because most of the meat was bought in bulk but over time the family size has decreased and therefore this farm has developed 30-40 different cuts. Extremely successful and the farmer started small and grew over time since 1968. He now has a bio-digester for the waste which he plans to use the methane to run an engine for electricity.












We currently are on our way to Bahia. It will be a 13-16 hour drive. The beach is at the other end of the ride!!! Stay tuned for more next time.

Take care, Class 13