Well I am on my way home now.  I have been in South Africa for nearly a week, most of that time near Cape Town.  I will get back home on the weekend, after spending nearly 17 weeks travelling the world.  In that time I have flown around the world twice and done nearly 65,000 air miles.  I have stayed in around 50 different hotels.  (more…)

Sounds like Munzie is getting a bit lonely and cranky in “Blogland”. Never mind, I’m sure plenty are reading & just too busy studying to write…

I’ve just had a great day with legendary low stress livestock handler “Bud Williams & his wife Eunice”, who also have extremely sharp marketing minds. He says the two things that most cattle producers focus on from a marketing viewpoint ‘is weight gain and market price. And both are irrelevant, and may have nothing to do with whether the sale is really profitable. (more…)

I am not too sure why I am the only one posting here.  I know that others are travelling at the moment, perhaps they are all too busy (or lazy?!!?).  I am in Lyon France at the moment.  I will be flying to the UK tomorrow for the beginning of the end of my travel, I only have Cape Town, South Africa to go before I get home. 

Since I posted here last I have been to Spain, a very interesting country if you can get anyone to understand you (I habla no Espanola).  Most of the country was shut down for their summer holidays while I was there – made finding people to interview fairly difficult.  I am now in France and have been looking at the wine industry here for just over a week.  Eastern France is an extremely picturesque part of the world and the wine industry here is interesting with many similarities but also some big differences to Australia.  I am still having some language difficulties so I am looking forward to the UK where I should only have problems with accents! 

I will be in Hobart for the spring tour, to see the other half of our group present their reports and to meet the new scholars.  Safe travelling to everyone that is ‘on the road’ and all the best for the people who are interviewing for one of the new scholarships.

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.