CANFA Comment

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

24 Aug: Columbus via Chicago, USA
Ray and I left Cimmyt and the group earlier in a chaufer driven car to arrive at Mexico Airport to find that they upgraded us to business class (they said that they needed to redistribute the weight in the plane? Ask no questions - just accept it all. As a consequence we had a great flight to Chicago. We were up at 3.10 am though to catch up with John Lawrie's group.

We had a long way to come here to Columbus but managed to fit in a couple of farm visits on the way. John and the crew tried to make us envious of the week we missed with them. The visit to Dwyne Beck in south Dakota and to Edwin Blosser (compost making) were apparently the two outstanding visits.

Tonight we are off to dinner at the Ihio University with Dr Randal Reeder (who spent four months with Neville Gould at Trangie some years ago) and Professor Rattan Lal (a soil carbon specialist), and a few others who we are yet to meet. We are looking forward to it.

Anne Williams