January 31, 2019
Bom Gia!
Today we had a real treat, the chance to visit AgroFava, a farm owned by a close friend of our own Professor Shirota. It consists of nearly 24,000 hectares, or 59,000 acres! Their second yearly crop is over 20,000 acres as well. On this farm they grow corn, soybeans, coffee, edible beans, seed soybeans, and seed corn. While we were onsite they even started construction on their own private cell phone tower!
AgroFava not only farms that many acres, it also operates a seed company roughly the same size as Seed Consultants in Ohio. We were able to tour the seed cleaning, treating, and bagging facilities. For efficiency AgroFava uses self-sealing bags. Many in the group thought US seed companies should convert to these easy packing bags! The company is able to store 33,000 metric tons of seed soybeans and can treat 80 tons an hour. They also grow seed corn and beans for well-known companies like Monsanto and DuPont.
To support their business AgroFava employees nearly 400 people, 40 of which live on site. They even provide lunch for all of their employees at an on-site cafeteria! The seed growing portion of the business requires massive amounts of water. To accommodate this need they built 12 dams to store surface water. This irrigation allows them to achieve an average yield of 60 bushels per acre for their seed acreage.
The coffee grown by AgroFava averages a yield 15 percent higher than the rest of Brazil! Over the course of the day we saw coffee plants ranging from 1 month to 15 years old. The first harvest of all coffee in Brazil must be done by hand and all harvest after that can be done with massive machines. We learned that young coffee requires a grass block in between each row for wind protection. Being able to see the pests common to coffee such as the White Fly illustrated to us just how difficult coffee farming could be.
Thank you for showing us your farm!
Farm Tours!
We learned about planting and harvesting of coffee.
-Johnny Cottingim