Sunday, January 30, 2011
Observations from Pat Dumoulin, Hampshire Ill.
We left the United States Saturday morning for Brazil, and safely landed Sunday morning in São Paulo where two groups of ISA travelers (one group departed from St. Louis and the second from Chicago) met up. São Paulo is a city with a population of 10.4 million people -- four times the size of Chicago. Brazil is the largest country in South America and is fifth in world population.
On the plane from Chicago to Miami, which was our connecting flight, I had an interesting conversation about farming with the person sitting next to me. The first question he asked me was about a specific ag company because he had heard bad things about the company.
I explained that as a farmer, if you don’t like a company, then all you have to do is not buy their product. But, I added, if a lot of farmers buy their product then they must have something valuable. We went from talking about that to animal welfare and pigs. I told him that all pigs want to do is eat, sleep and drink. As farmers, we judge how content pigs are by several things. Farmers can’t stay in business if they mistreat animals.
We also talked about organic farming. I did organic farming years ago, but I’m not interested in walking bean fields anymore. Also there is no way we can feed the world with organic farming. I explained that chemicals are not in the beans because they are processed.
We did jump from one topic to another. He mentioned to me when we started, that we would be in an argument before we got to Arkansas. We did not get into an argument at all. He said, “I learned a lot visiting with you. I’m not sure I’ve changed all my opinions but I certainly have learned a lot.” That is what I call education.
Looking ahead to the rest of the week, I am really looking forward to meeting farmers and seeing what the Brazilian crop looks like.
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