Saturday - The Dairy Industry

Our first field trip.... the excitement rising, 91 degrees at 8:30 in the morning, 93 degrees at 7:10 pm as I type this.  Whooosh!  Hot day but invigorating.  We left Antonio's Palace at 8:30 am and headed to Fazenda Cachoeira which is a dairy farm with 400 cows, 170 of which are milking.  The cows average 65 pounds of milk per day.  They people who are managing the farm are doing it for an investor who loves soccer teams and dairy.  They currently are producing 6000 kilos  of milk per day and want to expand to 60,000 kilos in the next six years.  Feed is their biggest cost with 70% of the cost produced on the farm and the other 30% is purchased inputs.They currently use US genetics with Select Sires and ABS.  You can see us with our boot covers on before we entered the building and they were worn for the whole visit.  We were able to see their feeding area, loafing shed which had peanut hulls last year for bedding and this year they are using compost, the milking parlor, the area for the calves, and pasture.  The students learned much about dairy cows and were able to "talk with the animals".   After each visit we give the host a thank you gift so you will see a picture of one of the students handing a gift to the host or the host with the gift.

We ate lunch in Sao Pedro at a quaint restaurant that probably was an old house initially.  It had a lot of wood and personality.  The meal was great and the city is small but very welcoming.  Many of us ordered homemade ice cream for dessert.  Many new flavors to pick from especially fruit flavors like plum!

In the afternoon we visited a dairy coop that processes 4000 liters of milk per day.  There are 126 farmers as a part of the coop with 36 farmers producing milk.  Currently the milk is processed as whole milk and yogurt but the coop will be expanding to cheese also.  They supply the grade schools in the five cities around Sao Pedro.  70% of the expansion will be funded by World Bank and 30% by the farmers of the coop.  The farmers actually built the facility they have now.  The biggest problem right now is milk production is not stable all year long and when the schools have their vacation they have extra milk so the intent is to make it into cheese which will last longer.  They use eucalyptus wood to provide the heat source for pasteurization.  You can see the milk that is packaged in plastic and we were able to taste it as well as three different kinds of yogurt: pineapple (abacaxi), strawberry (morango) and coconut (coco) mmmmm good!!

We then visited one of the small farms of a member of the coop.  This farmer is also the person who started the coop initially and has provided tremendous leadership to the community.  I think the students enjoyed listening to his responses to the questions.  He had chickens and cows and was very proud to show us each of his cows.

On the way back to Piracicaba we stopped at a look out that was gorgeous and we could actually see Piracicaba off in the distance.

A group of the students went to the Piracicaba Mall and a group came back to the hotel.  I am sure there will be some sunburned students in the morning.