Hope all is well, thanks once again for organising the Global Focus, it has been a fantastic trip. Some challanges along the way, but that is to be expected.

Sorry I haven't been sending in up dates in my spare time I seem to be spending most of it organising the rest of my study, with limited success. Currently I am in London, I have a couple of meetings arranged here and then I head to Italy. I hope Andrew has sent in the rest of our GF briefings if not let me know and I will forward them to you. Below if a breif summary of our tour. When I get back and have some time I will send in a more detailed report on the WYE course. Hope to catch up with you back in Australia. China was a real highlight congratulations on getting Angus on board. Both he and his students were a great help on the trip.

Welcome to China a culture and communication experience. We are in the Southern city of Guangzhou. After getting a new sim card for the phone and finally getting it to work after numerous calls to the provider, I found out that you are unable to send text messages out of China. Then when I do make calls the number comes up as private or a different number. It seems to be ok though while calling within China.

We were fortunate to have an Aussie with us who taught English over here for two years traveling with us. He was also able to arrange a farm visit to one of his student's places, which was a 3hr drive. 80% of the Chinese population is involved in farming and it makes up 17%of GDP, a staggering statistic considering the population is 1.2 billion. In short thefarmers are poor. Walking through the small village were the farmers had there markets was like watching a world vision add, the only difference that the people in this village had never seen a person from western civilization in the flesh. However the younger generation are being taught English and gave us a warm hello greeting even though they were a little taken aback. There are16 in our group while traveling in china we each put in 200rmb, with $1aus being equivalent to 6rmb. Thus paid for our lunch which the family cooked and also gave them a little extra (I think the father of the household said it was more then he earned in 6 months and wanted to give it back). The food was fantastic once you got past the chook heads and feet on the plate. We then walked around the village farm and were lucky enough to see a paddock being ploughed with an ox. They grow many small crops with each father figure from the village owning .7 of an acre. They then pool what they don't eat together and sell on the open market. What a great visit it was, I got the impression that the government may not have liked us doing this trip for various reasons.

Other places visited include a fresh fruit market and fish market where you can get anything from live crocodile to snakes this was another eye opening experience, especially when I have a case of stomach pains caused by who knows what (not a pleasant experience). To see fish being put on the ground then hosed of and put in plastic tubs with a little bit of water and dead yabbies being picked up off the ground and being put back with live ones.

Hope all is well over your side of the world. Meanwhile it is sunny and hot in Paris. Sorry I haven't been sending many e-mails but the trip has been very busy and hard to get service when time is short. I have also been spending my spare time trying to organize the rest of my trip. Our 6 week trip is over and from tomorrow I will be on my pat malone. So today is RandR in Paris (what a shame). Thought I may catch up a little.

The trip has been fantastic, after struggling through China as I managed to get rather ill early on the next step was California, what a contrast. Everything has to be big. Growing of high value crops in the desert? Hard to imagine but the region averages 9 inches a year with summer days averaging 35 degrees soils 100 feet deep and extremely green crops. This being through the use of irrigation and plenty of water, as they don't have to pay for this resource. As a consequence they have turned a blind eye to the over use of our most valuable resource. But that is America for you.

Moving on to Nebraska where the bio fuel industry is taking off at a rate of knots. This is starting to lift the price of maize, much to the Canadians delight as less subsidized grains will be dumped on their shores. Irrigation is also big as there is over 30,000 center pivot irrigation systems in use. Also a visit to a small dairy, milking 4500 cows, three times a day. Milking went for 24hrs a day you can do this with cheap imported labor.

Off to Canada well Ontario which is the main hub business. Niagara Falls was great to see, even with commercialism so close to it. Smaller farms and with no subsidies, being close to America people in the cropping were struggling to compete with imported produce. The soft fresh fruit, dairy and poultry are doing well. With both the dairy and poultry having protection in the form of a quota system. The quota system being measured on a cow and laying bird single unit basis, (if you purchased a dairy cow or a laying bird you have the quota until you sell your quota). The cost; dairy unit $30000 and Laying bird $1000. Tobacco was a big industry; however with the Canadian policy of being a no smoking nation by 2009 the quota for the products is being reduced every year. This has created a huge black market trade and resulted in the growers being given a pay out to stop growing Tobacco and this is no small payout. The majority of growers receiving this have enough money to retire on. Loosing one of our members (Leigh Vile), who had to return home to be with his wife Sue for the delivery of a new member to the Nuffield family "Rory Shay Vail". Who is a zephyr, delivered with a foggy bottom but clean feet and is unfortunately allergic to bees.

After a hop step and skip, we were in Ireland. Nation of hospitality and then more hospitality. Everyone was happy to have a chat over a pint or 3 of Guinness. Never a dull moment, throw in a game of hurling and football in miserable conditions in summer. What more could you expect. The size o the farms being small, Garry Hannigans quote "I have clay pans twice the size of the farms". The traceability of produce here, being second to none. From eggs to beef to poultry and lamb, all can be traced from paddock to plate. The crops exceptional yields of 10-12 tonne/ha in wheat and up to 5 tonne/ha in canola, with NO irrigation. With the fields being so small that our young farming lass (Caroline Brown), wouldn't be able to turn her header or seeder around in them. Word of the month "CROSS COMPLIANCE" what does it mean? Not even the UK (and Southern) scholars have a full handle on it with regulations that seem to be shifting all the time. I am not even sure if DEFFRA has worked out what cross compliance means. Large scale dairies the average herd size being 45 cows. The quota system being a help to the older generation who are happy with life but a hindrance to the younger who wish to expand. This all capped off with great hosts and a night out with the local young farmers (fantastic feed, singing and plenty of beers). Ireland is defiantly a place to visit. The fact that you can walk around the whole of Ireland without breaking into a sweat, drive on the correct side of the road and admire the bords a bonus. One only has to overcome, the language barrier. This is where we left "one eye Watson", to continue on his adventure.

Viva La France and only three amigos left standing. Arrive in France to a Jim Geltch phone call letting us know that our itinerary had changed again and trouble with car hire. Over two hours to get out of the airport. Our car was up graded only, to find a warning light showing in our Volvo. We were then given a silver e-series Mercedes. With the navigator working we were on our way. Two hours driving and we met with our host. Visiting the WW1 museum and war memorial in Amiens a real eye opener. You felt a wave of pride when seeing the high regard the Australians soldiers were held in. A night in Amiens, in a motel room that didn't have room to swing a cat in. Off to a small canola crushing plant. The farmer using the oil in his vehicles with the by-product referred to as cake (pellets) is used for stock feed. The oil being cheap as there was no excise. If the oil was taxed it wouldn't pay to have the system in place. Small plants like this are starting to be seen right across Europe.

From there we headed off to Cain. Visiting the WW11 war museum and strolling along the Normandy coast line. Stopping briefly to dip our feet in the water and getting a glimpse of the floating harbor that was built to bring in supplies once the coast line was captured. Having dinner in Cain then traveling to meet our next host. We arrived at our destination at 1am the following morning. We then found out our host was at a wedding, which was the reason that we didn't meet him on the Friday. After a few hours sleep it was breakfast and a quick tour around his place. Frederic (our host), also works at a rather large grain handling plant. Where the grain is dried, cleaned and graded before being exported. Ten silos each with a capacity of 1400 tonnes.

Back to Paris, where we dropped of our beloved merc and booked into our motel. I spent the majority of the evening sorting out plans for the rest of my trip. The following day was a brief tour of Paris, climbing the Eiffel tower before having a stroll and dinner on the champ's Elsie. This was our final global focus dinner for the final three of us and Garry's partner Tracy.

Well this is a quick snap shot of my travels look forward to catching up with every one when the opportunity arises.