Day 13 - January 10, 2013

Que Pasa? (Whats happening)

Today we left Buenos Aires to travel to Uruguay. We traveled by ferry to Uruguay, which took roughly an hour. Upon arrival, we exchanged our money to their form of Pesos, which exchanged to 19 Pesos for 1 U.S. dollar.

After what seemed like hours of waiting for and using the ONLY ATM at the ferry port.  We were off to our last tour of the trip at the local agriculture research center, which was a bit like our Checkoff and USDA systems.  The national research facility has five research stations across  the nation.  The research station that we visited started in 1914 and covers around 1300 Ha (around 3,211 ac).  At this research station they raise beef cattle, dairy cattle, sheep, crops, and pasture-land.  They also have five main research lab including a soils and water lab, animal nutrition, grain quality, milk quality, and a seed quality lab.  This particular research station employs around 190 staff.  The focus of the research at these stations are partially decided by local farmers and ranchers input.

The first of the units we visited was the Dairy research center which has around 300 head.  The main areas of research currently include dry matter intake and heat stress.

The next unit was the sheep unit (a personal favorite of Betsy's and Dr. Scramlin's).  They run around 2,000 head of white face commercial ewes on around 200 Ha.  They are currently in the process of crossbreeding their herd to more of a meat oriented breed to fit the countries ever changing needs, as they export around 80% of their meat products.

Following visiting the ewes we stopped to visit the oldest pasture plot research trial in South America and the 2nd oldest in the world.  This trial covered 11 Ha and half of which were fertilized and the other half were not.

Our final stop at the research station was their cattle research station, where they are currently working on a feedlot vs pasture trial with focusing on their weaning weight.

After finishing our final stop of the trip we loaded up and headed back to Colonia where we are spending the night.  After checking into the hotel a portion of us decided to go swimming while another portion of us decided to embrace the culture and take a siesta.

To cap off the evening we ate at a local restaurant as some of the group decided to expand their cultural awareness and try some new things including some goat and fried squid.

We hope all of our friends back at SDSU are having a wonderful time with the start of a new semester and classes.

Andrea Diehn and Betsy Krohmer