[Continued from Page 68] dreds of miles in the course of a day touring co-ops in the hinterlands, and meeting with the management or the boards of directors there all in temperatures that he remembers as “exhausting.” It was often as late as ten in the evening when they arrived back at their hotel for dinner. Judging by the milk cooperatives he visited, the dairy business in Brazil appears to operate, for the RICHARD R. FORRY WBM 2020 Horseshoe Rd„ Phone 717-397-0035 Lancaster, PA SPECIALIST IN YOUR FIELD Brazilian most part, well below U.S. standards. “It was quite shocking to me,” Ruth commented of one large milk cooperative he toured, “to find that they accept milk with a 2 1 /£-million bacteria count. They do pasteurize it and try to bring it down to 40,000 before it goes to the store,” he added. He discovered that no government program for TB or bangs testing exists, and although a farmer may have his herd tested on his own, it is very expensive to do so. Although most of the milk co-ops they saw were small and otherwise unimpressive, Ruth recalled one in Rio de Janeiro that was quite ad vanced. “Here they had white milk packaged in plastic pouches, and to my surprise, in addition to the six packaging machines for that purpose, they even had three machines that did septic packaging.” The question of the absence of septic packaging in other co ops, he pointed out, was most often met with protests about the high costs of the packaging and refrigeration. This particular co-op also had “quite a large cheese operation... the best cheese I ate while in Brazil.” He summed it up with “what it really all said was that they started with a better product from the farm. Advanced management requires better quality from the farms so you wind up with a better product.” One man at the co-op particularly impressed Ruth. He was a professor at the University of Vicosa who alternated every two weeks between the university and the co-op where he occupied a management position. “I felt that he must contribute a great deal to the university as well, because you get a very realistic picture when you work in an area as well as teach it.” He was surprised, Ruth said, that they did not have more ice cream in Brazil. One man at the co-op said that they had considered making ice cream 15 years ago but had decided against it because of the refrigeration costs, but now they were sorry they hadn’t. The four largest milk companies which are doing the best financially, he told him, are now primarily in ice cream and have dropped other dairy products because ice cream has proved to be so profitable. Although the Americans did not get to visit a typical dairy farm in Brazil, it was arranged for them to visit one farm just outside of Rio. “It was a very modem operation . . . everything was a showplace, im maculate,” Ruth observed. The 80-cow herd was mostly Red Holsteins, 45 of which had been imported from Wisconsin. The owner, who spoke some English, had 754 trophies for showing cows over the past 14 years. He employed 41 people to run the farm which included “every kind of animal you • could think of,” in addition to the 200 head of dairy cattle. Although the dairy operation was quite modem, the owner said that he is losing money every day and Ruth acknowledged that it was probably the truth. Besides the problems of disease, packaging, and refrigeration costs already mentioned, Ruth pointed out that the climate in Brazil is a great hindrance to dairy production. At the ex perimental farm at the University of Vicosa, they use the zebu, a tropical breed of beef cattle which can withstand heat, and cross breed them with Holsteins. The result is an animal which can withstand the heat better than a U.S. breed but which is still a poor milk producer. They had 180 to 200 cows at the farm which only produce 1100 liters (2420 pounds) of milk per day which, he added, is very low by U.S. standards. “Of course,” he pointed out, “they do not spend anything for feed. The cows just eat what grows.” If the dairy business in Brazil lags behind that in the United States, Ruth found that the Brazilians are not at all backward in their grain operations. They grow mainly soybeans and wheat, and “self-propelled com bines are as common as in the United States.” He visited a very large co-op in the southern part of Brazil which he described as “very diversified. They handle wheat and soybeans and are just building their sixteenth supermarket.” In addition, the co-op was helping cen tralize eight smaller milking co-ops in the area. The co-op, Cotrijui had a several hundred thousand ton storage capacity and uses storage bams instead of silos, “which is-very sen sible,” Ruth pointed out, “because they do not have to have a strong structure.” The following day the party visited the co-op’s export terminal which is located on the southernmost tip of Brazil. He described the terminal as being quite impressive. They are able to load two vessels of 6,000 tons each in 24 hours, he learned, and at the same time load two barges on the other side of the elevator. The climate is a definite asset to growing soybeans and wheat in Brazil and one soybean farmer, it was reported to Ruth, has 600 acres of soybeans averaging WARNING! I Continued on Page 72] ITS TERMITE SEASON vaIUE OF YOUR Lancaster Farming, Saturday, May 15,1976 69 46 bushels to the acre. “So you can imagine,” he added, “what they could do with a little advancement in soil conservation.” Another advantage provided by the climate which he pointed out is that a Brazilian farmer can grow a soybean and a wheat crop in the same year. The United States still provides Brazil with half of her wheat needs, because she has favored soybean production due to larger profits. Ruth has a daughter and son-in-law living in Brazil and was able to extend his stay several days to visit with them. His son-in-law is on a five-year program there doing research in the area of diseases which afflict soybeans. He is working for the University of Wisconsin which operates with a university in Brazil much as INCRA and Partners work together. (He learned, by the way, that they were not instrumental in his selection and had not even known the evaluation was being planned.) An interesting sidelight to Ruth’s trip pointed up the old saying, “it’s a small world.” At their hotel in Fortaleza, a young girl knocked on their door explaining that she had inquired at the desk to learn if there were any Americans staying at the hotel. She was a senior in high school who had gone to Brazil as an exchange student sponsored by her local Rotary Club. At the time, she was vacationing with her Brazilian adoptive parents. In the course of the con versation Ruth discovered that she was from Pottstown. Her name was Maritta Terefenko and she described herself as ‘‘a third generation Italian.” It turned out that Ruth was only the second American she had spoken to during the seven months she had been
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