Scholars’ Travel[b]log

I am now back in Maryland (after visiting here on our global focus tour).  Since my last post I have spent time in California, Idaho, Washington and New York.  I have been amazed at how willing total strangers have been to talk to me, just a humble grape grower from Australia.  I have been a little disorganized with my study.  The expression ‘winging it’ (or rotoring it) describes the way my schedule has been organized so far.  Mostly my plans have only been falling in to place a couple of days before I arrive.  While most people here have never heard of Nuffield, they have still been extremely generous with their time and information.  All it takes is an email or phone call and most of the people I have contacted are very willing to help me anyway they can.  I will be leaving the USA this coming friday and heading to Europe for the next 3 weeks or so.  I am having a amazing time and learning more than I think I currently realise - it will take me a very long time after I get home to digest everything.

Well our global focus program is winding up now.  We have just left Manila on our way back to Australia.  We stayed at the International Rice Research Institute near Manila.  This was an very good place to end our world tour, considering how crucial rice is to so much of the worlds population and how much world rice stocks influence grain prices.  We have seen how this institute is trying to improve rice yields to offset the increase in world population and, at the same time, the reduction in area that is being planted to cerials (not to mention bio-fuels).  They are using both breeding techniques and genetic modification to achieve this result - this generated a lot of debate within our group.  We have had a faantastiic group of people to travel with, argue with, party with, and generally get to know really well. 

We are currently in Boston(USA) waiting for a delayed flight to Washington DC. So I thought I would write just a little about what we have been up to. We spent the last 3 days in France. While there we visited a number of small (by our standards) farms. It appears to us that these farms are only viable because of the EU subsidies that they receive (it is all very productive land though). We also visited the Rungies international market early monday morning to see fruit, vegies, cheese and meat being traded there. They also trade seafood and flowers as well, however they were not open on Monday. This was a very impressive visit with fruit and veg, that I have never seen before being traded. There are something like 25,000 trucks that pick up or deliver to this market every day. Last night we stayed in a really nice French country villa.

I am currently in Chartres, France on the Nuffield global focus tour.  We have been having an incredible time.  Our group of 11 (8 Aussies, 2 Kiwi’s and a token Canadian) are all feeling rather tired.  We are having to cope with very early mornings and late nights as well as jet lag and long sessions visiting farms and listening to other presentations.  I have learnt more about the world dairy industry in the last 2 weeks than I will probably ever be able to use.  But it is not just dairy, we have been to pig, sheep, beef, cropping, poultry, thoroughbred horse and seafood farm operations and have had a chance to question the owners/managers of all of them (we have even been to some farms that I think they actually farm tractors, one Irish farm had more than 60).

Hi All, this is a link to my tour blog if your interested. www.bokharaplains.com

Just scroll down and hit the button. Feed back ( critical or supportive ) will be appreciated, as I know it will be a little controversial to farmers in some quarters. I’m thick skinned and enjoy the challenge!!

The New Zealander’s have now joined up with us again, after flying the other way around the world from the rest of the group.  We are now sitting in Heathrow waiting for our flight to Dublin and the International conference.  So far everything has been going relatively smoothly for our group (touch wood, most are fairly pessimistic that we will see our bags in Dublin).  We are working quite well as a group.  We have each been appointed a ministry of responsibility, as minister for Technology; I will be trying to update this post as often as possible.

Well my post from the Qantas club in Sydney has vanished from the Nuffield web site, so here is another one from Methven in NZ.  The group is all together now and about to have our second night.  Very interesting to see the difference between agriculture in NZ and Australia!  Anyway hopefully this post won’t be eaten by the Nuffield machinery.  Will post again when I can.

Thanks Matthew for elbowing me out of apathy & Ronald for being a regular ‘poster’ on what is a very under utilised resource with this blog…I was also quite relieved after Melbourne that I wasn’t booked on a longer flight than to Dubbo via Sydney. Not sure if it was Bronchitis or not, and my thoughts were that it may have been some sort of transmissable disease from the northern hemisphere!. I have been thinking about the talk we had in Perth where the emotional roller coaster we ride before the trip was discussed. We have been very busy here at home since I got back from Melbourne and I think that maybe the whole thing is only just starting to sink in. Also, reading quite a few of the recent scholars reports has me aware of the need to focus a whole lot more. How did the first GFG go?? Has not been much news from anyone as yet.

Well it appears that the group on their global focus tour at the moment are not very good bloggers, so I have decided to write a bit here (to test that I can), and so Ronald is not the only contributor.  I have decided to let people know some of my thoughts about the contempary scholars conference held in Melbourne last month. 

When I returned home, my first port of call was the doctor to be diagnosed with Bronchitis - I blame the UK scholars for that, thank you all very much.  I was very pleased that I was not one of the group travelling straight away.  Anyway health to one side.  I felt the conference was extremely useful for meeting the other scholars and learning more about each other.  The first session that we had where we all got up and introduced ourselves to the group was great - but I probably needed to be taking notes, rather than worrying about what I was going to say.  Once I had done my bit then I found I could relax and take a lot more in. 

The June travelling group (nearly all of us at least) got to together the first night we were all in Melbourne for dinner.  It was fairly informal but I felt, a really great way to get to know each other a little better.  This was the first and only time we had/will have to do this before we all meet again in NZ in June.  I would like to suggest to the Nuffield organization that they try to encourage this kind of get together for future travelling groups. 

The rest of the program was very full on!  I found it a lot of fun, but still learnt a huge amount, not only about other industries and enterprises, but it also helped me focus on how we run our own business.  I found it very rewarding to meet and talk to so many enthusiastic and ’switched on’ farmers, I have come home feeling a lot more positive about our own operation (even if the Victorians are not going to let us downstream users have any more water).  I felt there were very few ‘dud’ sessions that we did, the only one that springs to mind for me was the housing estate (Eynesbury), while interesting to see what they were doing with the recycled water, I felt we spent too long there. 

I have now realised that I only have about 7 weeks to go now untill we leave on our global focus tour, so I will have to start to get myself organized.  If our global focus tour is anywhere near as good as the Melbourne conference, we are going to have a really incredble time and learn an amazing amount.

The group has had a top time and has seen a diverse range of agriculture. After arriving in Sao Paulo we went o Brasilia and were briefed by the CNA ( like Australias NFF) and EMBRAPA a CSIRO type of oganization and then a high level talk with a range of big players in agriculture. A bus to Goiania and Unilever saw large scale tomato farming, 400000 tonnes of tomatoes with soy beans chickens and cattle.

The night was long with a big day of travel with Milton Suzuki and visiting the best coffee produced in the world. The next day was intergrated farming with Ma Sha Tou group with 1500ha sugar 1000 cattle and 300 head dairy with 1000 ha of soy that left as biscuits.