January 27- Orange Farm day! Alex Neilley

Our last day of regular classes in Piracicaba was spent reviewing for the exam and preparing for our group presentations that we will present after our 11 day road trip. Some of the topics chosen include educational and justice system differences between the U.S and Brazil the dairy industry of Brazil just to name a few. I think I speak for all of the students that we are excited to choose an area of interest to study on our own.
After class we left for an afternoon filled with oranges… lot and lots of oranges. Our first stop was at a orange processing and marketing facility. They buy freshly picked oranges by the truck load from the farmers, wash and dry them, coat them in wax for preservation, sort them by size (to supply the market demands), then they package and ship by truck. While we were at this facility, we much have tried at least four different kinds of oranges. Some were sour, some sweet, and some mostly tasteless. We also tried some freshly squeezed juice which was delicious. They sent us off with more oranges than we would ever eat (at least 200)…
Our second stop was at an orange farm. At this farm we learned about some of the production practices. We learned that most of the time an orange tree will only produce until 10-15 years of age. In the past, they would see trees producing until 30 years old, but there has been a recent disease spreading called greening that causes the tree to die prematurely. While we were there, they were in the process of removing many trees around 30 years old to replace with corn because it has become very difficult to produce a profit with oranges. We also learned that they have to spray their trees every 15 days with an insecticide because otherwise the bugs will take over. Of course we also had to taste test some oranges here, so after about 3 more types, we all decided we had enough.
Just before leaving to return to the hotel to study for the exam, we gathered around “professor” Grant to let him teach us about judging soil quality, and then took some glamour shots among the trees as a group just for kicks and giggles