CANFA Comment

5 Sept: Mazatlan, Mexico
Just an update as we spend the morning in a hotel on the beach at Mazatlan on the Pacific ocean. Since the last email we left Mexico City for a visit to Cimmyt (the second time for Ray and I) but still very informative and interesting.

Fernando was in his usual charismatic form showing us the wheat breeding and conservation agriculture trials. This time though they treated us to a Mexican lunch with the research crew who had been in the fields putting blue tape on individual wheat heads, that would later be harvested by hand in order to keep the seed for further selection. The lunch was salsa and t-bone steak so we were really spoilt!

Heading north of Mexico City with have travelled through beautiful green and some very rich agricultural land - not how I had pictured Mexico at all. We have stopped off at an organic avocado and macadamia farm to see handmade biofertilisers in action. Eugenio Gras recommended this farm to us and he will be in Australia for another course in Mudgee later this month, which we are going to.

On the way, we stopped off at La Cofradia, a tequila farm and factory for lunch. The name tequila is licensed to only approximately three states in Mexico but this one was in the shadows of Tequila Mountain. We learnt how the pineapple of the agave (very similar to our aloe vera) plant is baked, fermented and distilled to form three types of tequila. We tasted all three and thought all were pretty good. After the tour of the factory, museum and shop we had a Mexican lunch outside with a mango margarita!

The hotel we're in is right on the beach but it also has swimming pools with a swim up bar and live music. We only have one more day with the bus and the rest of the trip will be by train so it will be different, but we are certainly seeing some wonderful countryside up the west coast of Mexico.

Anne Williams

27 - 29 August: Chicago, Kentucky, Memphis, New Orleans (USA)

Since Chiciago we have seen farms along the way mostly growing corn and soybeans with some wheat as we move further down. All we saw were working closely with university extension officers to try to extend their yields. In that race they may have lost sight of optiminising gross margins due to excessive inputs (seed and high land costs). Land prices have sky-rocketed with higher commodity prices.

We were enlighted by Dr Rattan Lal who was head researcher into carbon sequestration and a government advisor. He said that he was keen to come to our place to see large areas of chickpeas growing because back in India, where he grew up, the largest paddock was 0.5 ha.

We also went to a farm promoting cover crops after grain crops where we met Dr Rafiq Islam, who gave us a better insight into biological farming nitrogen utilisation. We are keen to keep in contact with this researcher as he was willing to discuss our sap tests results.

Progressing further down to Kentucky, the soils are very much more challenging with impervious clay layers only 12 inches down. They are trying to overcome it with rye grass as a cover crop as the roots may break through this layer.

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Well here we are in New Orleans! After leaving Kentucky we travelled down to Nashville and then on to Memphis. In Nashville we toured the music museum which was very good and that night went to the Grand Old Ophry. This was live country music going out over radio (and has been since 1925). It was a great night and found a new love in the music.

In Memphis we had a tour of Gracelands, through the house and gardens - certainly worth a visit. We stayed at the Heartbreak Hotel which was decked out in 1950/60 decore and watched The King live play in a few concerts in the dining room.

The interstate highways are an extremely efficient transport system, all dual carriage ways making travelling very easy.

Having a great time but will be heading back off to Mexico again after tomorrow for a couple of weeks, which should be great.

Anne Williams

19 Aug: Dallas, Texas
After another couple of flights, here we are in Dallas ready to leave tomorrow for Mexico. We're having a great time!

In St Louis we saw Monsanto's headquarters - 2,500 employees and 5,000 all up in St Louis.They spend more on ag research than the USDA does.

We went to Gavilon Grain Elevators, after which a couple of Texans lead us on a visit to their farms - pretty impressive. They are having more than a month of temps above 100F and in the midst of a serious drought which they are starting to compare to the 1930's Dust Bowl, but this time without the dust storms. Despite the dry they are still harvesting some crops such as sunflowers and cotton.

We had lunch at a real Texan bar at the Fort Worth Stock Yards - they had saddles as bar stools!

A free day tomorrow before another flight to Mexico which we are all greatly looking forward to.

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22 Aug: Cimmyt, Mexico
Hi there from Mexico City, our last visit on the GRDC’s The way we were trip.

Yesterday we went to Cimmyt and met the farm manager Fernando Delgardo (pictured here in wheat trials at Cimmyt) who ran an excellent experimental station with a lot of emphasis on breeding wheat and corn for international partners, but always kept in mind his obligation to improve the local farming systems that are around 1 acre per farmer (with livestock included). The chief breeder, Dr Ravi Singh from Sydney Uni, gave us an excellent insight into how plant breeding for wheat works and their ambition to be ahead of the next global catastrophe in wheat diseases. He was able to quote wheat breeds, like Cook and Hartog, that we direct descendants of Mexican Cimmyt breeding programs.

Australian, Dr David Bonnett showed us his trials pre-breeding to bring back the genetics of ancient grasses and durum wheats to bring more diversity into the genome pool, bringing hybrid vigour back into the breeding program so that they may be selected to put into the main line of breeding. We are privledged to met such clever people as we have travelled.

We are visiting the Australian Ambassador this afternoon and back to the headquarters of Cimmyt tomorrow before we fly back to Chicago to catch up with John Lawrie's tour of USA and Mexico. It will be great to catch up with them.

Anne Williams