On the first day of our trip we met in Chicago to start our journey to travel to the most populous city in South America: Sao Paulo!  After a 10 hour flight, where one of our flight attendants fell in the aisle (due to an IBIP student's backpack in the way) while serving us breakfast, we finally arrived. After meeting with our travel guides, Felipe, Daniel, and Brenda of Campus Brasil, we took a bus to the hotel. They shared with us that the population in the Sao Paulo (+ surrounding metropolitan area) is 20 million people, which makes it the 7th largest city in the world. 

For more about ACE and our experiential learning opportunities, visit the ACE Experiential Learning Blog.

We are excited to premier our final video projects from the March 16th – 22nd spring break study tour to northern California. This experience proved to be an excellent opportunity for the students, and we are grateful for our hosts in California who opened up their offices, homes, and fields to University of Illinois College of ACES students and their research.

https://vimeo.com/65234594

Organic Foods
By Blake Croegaert, Jahna Goldman, Amelia Martens, & Amy Yanow
April 30, 2013

Sadly, today's tour was our last experience in Europe. We were fortunate enough to spend it with KWS Seed. In the morning, Rudiger Strohm gave us an overview of the company in the present and their goals for the future. It was interesting to learn that the company has three different divisions including: sugarbeets, corn/oil crops, and cereals. They breed crops for numerous resistances and they hope to increase their crop yields by 1-2% per year in the future. We learned that the company also has a focus on sustainable energy, and they produce biogas.

Today we left Hotel Rheinischer Hof in Duisburg, Germany and headed to Warstein where our first visit of the day was at Elmar Steinruecke's Percheran and horse training farm. We got to walk through the barns and a few of us even had the opportunity to sit on their Percheron Stallion named Sigfreid. This particular farm is also heavily tied to Warsteiner's Brewery, which is where we headed next.

This morning we had the opportunity to visit McDonald's Food Town located in Duisburg, Germany. Although there was not a McDonald's in sight, we still enjoyed many of our favorite foods. Food Town was developed around the concept of efficient logistics and distribution. Two of McDonald's largest suppliers, OSI Food Solutions and Fresh Start Bakeries, are built in tandem along with HAVI Logistics in order to help save on transportation costs.

After leaving Leiden for the last time this morning, we and all our luggage headed to visit the ADM cocoa processing facilty in the Amsterdam port area. Ad Grinwis, the Logistics Coordinator for the facility, showed us the discharge station where beans from other countries, namely Ivory Coast and West African regions, are brought in. Most of the beans come from various regions in Africa. An interesting fact that Ad shared was that the biggest problem he faced was theft from locals in Africa.

It was an early morning! We departed at 6:30 a.m. for the flower market: FloraHolland. Our tour guide, Niek, showed us around the market. We couldn't believe the thousands of flowers we saw coming through the marketplace. It was interesting to learn about how the flowers are brought into the market between 3 p.m. and 3 a.m., and then sold between 3:30 a.m./4 a.m.-ish through about noon.

Taking advantage of the free day, we experienced a train ride ending in the most famous city in Holland; Amsterdam. Before even leaving Leiden, Matt decided it would be a good idea to stop for a coffee and proceeded to miss the train. This was a great start to a day full of interesting events. Rainy and overcast skies welcomed us on our way to Anne Frank's Museum. The Museum depicted the profound story of Anne Frank and her family, hiding in Amsterdam during the Nazi persecution against Jews.

We were up early in Leiden and hit the road for a very interesting day. First, we visited a huge windmill which was installed 7 years ago by a group of regular citizens. The windmill provides power for 1400 households in the area. It was fascinating to go inside the windmill and hear from an expert in the field, Denny Steenhorst. The windmill we saw cost the investors a total payment of 2.25 million Euro. It was also very interesting to learn that the energy it took to construct the windmill was recovered in 4 months of the windmill's operation.