Spanning the Globe

A Great Experience

I wanted to make some comments about the trip and what the experience has meant to me.  I have learned a lot about the agriculture here as well as the customs and history of South Africa.  I would suggest strongly to anyone visiting this country, that they spend some time reading about its history.

Agriculture means so much to this country.  The people need it to survive and many of its major products go directly into the human food chain.  Maize is the largest crop by far and about 60% of that maize is white maize and is used for human consumption.  The second largest crop is sunflowers and all the oil processed from sunflowers goes into the human food chain.  I am amazed at the natural resources they have here and am fascinated by the beauty.  They mine gold, diamonds and salt.  They also have rock quarries and mine their own limestone. They have a rather large amount of hectares in sugarcane, vineyards and they even brew many fine beers.  All this from a country about twice the size of Texas.  I also appreciate their interest and innovation with new crops, such as, kenaf, amaranth, prickly pear, hoodia, and others.

This trip has given me a greater understanding of the difficulties SA farmers face with their crops; Soybean rust, maize streak virus, seedling insects and diseases, drought, and lack of irrigation.  Larger farms have the capacity to cope with these problems with equipment and crop protection, but smaller farmers cannot afford the inputs it takes to produce a crop; a crop just to feed themselves and their families.

My experience here for the past 2 weeks has been one that I will not soon forget.  It has been an opportunity that I am truly thankful for.  There have been many individuals that have been responsible for the trip. On behalf of all of us on the trip, I would like to thank the authors of the USDA International Science Education Grant who made the trip possible and also thanks to our South African and Virginia Tech colleagues with whom we interacted.  We appreciate the work of the Virginia Tech Extension Communications personnel who developed the “blog” site so we could relay our experiences to others as they followed our trek.  We appreciate the support from the clientele and from local government in each of our localities.  We wish to thank the administration of the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Virginia Cooperative Extension for their support of the trip.

Lastly, thanks to each of you who took the time to follow us on the blog.  We hope it has been entertaining.  That is all.

1. Hi Cousin David! This sounds like a fascinating trip. While you went there to study agriculture, it's clear you came away with much more. For instance, your last posting touched on things I had been wondering about as an accountant (VT '81): the financial aspects of operating a farm and the ability of the small farms to support families. I'm glad you had this opportunity. Yes, the blog was entertaining! Ann
   Posted by  on  03/20  at  12:10 PM
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