We went back to school bright and early Thursday morning at University of São Paulo School of Agriculture. At 8am we were welcomed by our friend Daniel and Dr. Jamie Finguerut. They enlightened us about the history and statistics of their university. We learned that they have about 89,000 students in São Paulo and 6,000 professors. Brazilian college students do not have to pay for tuition and attend class March-June and August- December. We were then welcomed by a microeconomics class where we learned about crude oil and the relationships between Brazil, Germany and the U.S. It was an amazing experience to be able to interact and have discussions with Brazilian students!

Next, we enjoyed a buffet lunch on campus and continued with 4 more presentations about Brazil’s heated political climate, organic coffee, sustainable agriculture and the agriculture industry in Brazil. It was interesting to learn that Brazil produces about half of the world’s coffee and .1% of that is organic. There were two students from ESALQ that presented their research projects to us, one of which focused on measuring sustainability and the other was focused on Halal, the production process of Kosher meats.

Our last lecture of the day was focused on the agriculture industry in Brazil as a whole. It was interesting to learn that 90% of the farms in Brazil are less than 40 acres, 9% of farms are 40-400 acres and the last 1% is greater than 400 acres. We ended the day at an amazing restaurant called Porto da Praia where we shared laughs, great food & drink, and sadly said tchau to Pedro!