Monday February 17,
2014
After a great start of the day at the Quinamavida resort, we
boarded the bus to a very interesting tour of a large diverse farm own by Juan
Carlos Sotomayor. Juan Carlos purchased
this farm which had been farmed very traditionally with crops and livestock
. Juan Carlos’ vision transformed this
farm into a diverse farm focusing now on mostly fruit production including
blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, grapes, plums, apples and kiwi and
vineyards. His farm now includes nearly
10,000 acres. He has four sons with
three of them farming with him with their own areas of expertise. Each son has attended undergraduate school in
Chile, but then pursued advanced degrees in other countries with most of them
acquiring engineering degrees.
Juan Carlos has pursued necessary
requirements for the sale of organically produced blueberries. Juan Carlos admitted that at the beginning, these blueberries only produced about ½ of
conventionally produced blueberries , but after five years he has experienced
good production and profitability. Juan
Carlos has decreased his kiwi production and may eliminate it completely as the
cooler climate in his area has resulted in the poorest year ever. His kiwi fields normally will yield 340
Ton/hectare, but this year they may only produce 10 Ton/hectare. The cold climate this year has affected much
of his fruit production which the largest damage occurring early in the season
as the crops are flowering and budding.
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| Kiwi's at Juan Carlos Sotomayor's fruit farm |
Juan Carlos’ large farm size prevents him from buying any
insurance for his crops and does not allow him to receive any government
subsidies. While the cool weather has
been devastating for Juan Carlos’ production, it has however created a high
demand and price for the products allowing satisfactory profitability.
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| Juan Carlos, tourguide Fred and Class VII touring the fruit farm. |
The highlight for our tour at his farm today was our
experience of watching a blueberry picker in action in the field. We were able to walk right next to the
machine as it shook the berries from the plants and conveyed them to the top of
the picker where the driver and packaging people operated. This machine was manufactured in Oregon and
was shipped to Chile at a delivered cost of about $175,000 and was predicted to
be in use for the next 15 years.
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| Blueberries, ready to pick and eat |
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| Berrie harvester |
In the afternoon we
ventured to a large irrigated field of seed corn production managed by
Monsanto. In about 10 days, these fields
will begin to be harvested and will be processed likely at the Monsanto plant
in Paine, Chile, that we toured earlier in the week. Here the plant will husk, dry, shell, and
prepared for shipping to the US where it will receive its final grading
preparing it for retail sales. We were
especially fortunate to have our own chief agronomist, Joe Schefers, give a
great explanation of what was happening in the seed fields. Joe’s impromptu presentation gave a history
of seed corn production to the advancements of what we experience today. While Chile has not approved the sale of GMO for
use in its country, most of the seed production fields were planted with those
products to be used in countries that approve its use.
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| Seed Corn for US Market |
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| Corn grower Francisco & staff, Angela with Monsanto |
Submitted by Randall Questad
