By Clint Vance, Ohio State and Tina Holst, University of Wisconsin – Plattville

We once again had a great day in Brazil! What an awesome experience we have been having! Warm and mild weather, shining sun, great people, and even greater food have been treating us well this far!! We are staying in Ponte Nova and have been able to enjoy this city to the fullest.

This morning we visited and toured a sugar mill, of which the smell was very close to corn silage (welcome home!). This mill, Jatiboca, was founded in 1920 and is made up of two units. The first unit was the location we were at and the second being in Sao Paulo. The mill was family owned and operated until 1997 when they hired out the administration for the company. A brief introduction to each location is as follows:

-Location 1 (The one we visited)- 800,000 million ton crushing capacity, 84% of sugar cane is from their own production land with 16% coming from independent farmers, 1.1million bags of sugar per year (50 kilo bags), 32 million liters of ethanol produced annually which is added to fuel and then sold (not directly to customers) and is 100% manually harvested.

-Location 2- 300,000 million ton crushing capacity, 99% of sugar cane is from their own production land with the remainder from independent growers, 100% goes into ethanol resulting in 30 million liters of ethanol annually. 35% mechanical and 65% manual harvesting.

General mill information- Bags of sugar are marketed in 30, 5, 2, and 1 kilo bags and each mill is self- sustaining, meaning bi-products are reused as fertilizer as well as energy for the plant. Jatiboca employs 2,000 people. The company is devoted to environmental sustainability and has set aside a large piece of land which has been exclusively devoted to remaining in natural habitat forever. In order for workers to get minimum wage, they must harvest 3 tons of sugar cane per day with 5.5 tons being the average.

A brief agronomy introduction for the plant follows. The plant has 13,000 hectares of production sugar cane, 4,500 of which are in Sao Paulo. They are expecting yields of 600,000 million tons at this location and 300,000 million tons at the later mill. Planting consists of two seasons with one being August to November planting and a January to April planting. The only used areas are those able to be accessed by tractor and truck. This is also the only remaining sugar production in the area because of the rough topography found in this part of Brazil. The company is careful to practice nutrient management and carefully tests, analysis, and fertilizes the soil before each planting. The organization projects that in 10 years, there will be no manual labor involved with this process. The workforce is aging just as quickly as new technologies are coming out, making it an ideal transition.

The steps for sugar production include crushing the sugar cane, bi products go back into the mill, are used for fertilizer or ethanol, bagaco is burned for energy, and the sugar cane juice is sent to be made into sugar. The juice is filtered, put into a vacuum for crystallization, and then into a centrifuge to separate out the sugar. This process takes 8 to 10 hours to complete.

The steps for ethanol production include putting the pure sugar cane juice and syrup into a centrifuge, fermentation with added components for 8 hours until remaining sugar is turned into ethanol, centrifuge, distilled ethanol to create “wine”, distillation column, and finally the water is removed.

After the sugar mill, we travelled to a small shop, which one of the sugar mill owners owns and manage. This shop included, under basic descriptions, guava and mango jams and jellies. The guava and mango jams can be spread of crackers or served as a dessert with very mild white cheese. The guava jelly was made from the guava pulp and rind and was very sweet, similar to honey. (Let me tell you, guava is a wonderful smell!!) The owner’s wife uses his grandmother’s recipe for the jams which was passed down to his mother and finally to her. The couple is currently building a large addition onto the existing structure to expand production. We will possible see this product in the export market some day!

After lunch, we had the opportunity to visit Coosuiponte. Coosuiponte is a swine cooperative which is made up of the association of swine growers and then the co-op itself. There are a total of 110 members in this co-op which represent 75,000 sows. Both of these numbers have increased rapidly over the past 15 years and Coosuiponte expects the numbers to keep increasing as they keep trying to increase pork consumption in the state.

This co-op was founded by 16 different counties. During the beginning years of this co-op, it was very hard for them to stay afloat because the government wanted to charge high taxes on them. They solved this problem by becoming larger but then would be faced with different challenges in the future. They ended up surviving and remain strong today! The co-op is described more as a lobby group today rather than what we would expect back in the states at our local co-op.

The biggest problem that this industry faces much like the United States is the sanitary issues. Unfortunately, we will be unable to view any large scale swine operation simply for the fact that they don’t want any outbreaks which could potentially cause a lot of harm to their operation. If you ask any hog producer in Brasil that question, you will almost every time receive that same response.

A program that this co-op has created was to try and increase per capita consumption by 3 kilograms from 13 kilograms consumed to 15. They ended up achieving this goal in three years and since the response was so overwhelming, they have decided to up the ante. There new goal is to increase the number from 15 kilograms to 18 by the year 2015. It is very interesting to see how involved this co-op is with the local people and then compare it to our local co-ops back home.

Finally, a big issue in the states right now about swine production is the use of gestation crates. A question from the group was raised about these crates and if the same pressure is being put on in Brazil from activist groups as the United States. After asking the question, both speakers looked at us funny and at first we didn’t really know why. Then as we received there answer, we then understand why they did what they did. In Brazil, most, if not all the people realize the importance of these crates and know that they are being used for the safety of the animal. Unlike our society in the United States where they dictate how the food is produced, here in Brazil they appreciate food being put on their plates and the society is not controlling how it is being done.

After we had supper, we then discussed this issue again on the ride back to the hotel. I believe it really opened up the eyes of all of us knowing that our society is choosing how they want their food to be produced, not knowing the facts and just going off of per feelings or what another friend thinks. Like many other things on this trip, I believe this issue has given us more firepower to come back with to try and get the rest of the society to realize how important these crates are to swine production.

Thank you all for continuing to remain up-to-date with the trip’s progress! It is great to know we have followers joining our every experience through this great blog! We are having an absolute blast and have all truly made friends we will remain in contact with long into the future!