Day 9 -- ACA Feed Mill, Rosario Board of Trade, & Dinner with APOSGRAN

Day 9 got off to a nice early start (7 am is too early for college students) to make it possible for us to take a tour of an ACA Feed Mill. ACA is the Argentine Cooperative Association. They function as a co-op of co-ops and have a wide variety of operations and products, such as animal nutrition, animal health, and production agriculture inputs. The feed mill produces a wide variety of products from Reuter, a proprietary product that improves the development of the rumen in cattle, to pet feed in varying grades and purposes. The mill does not buy any pre-mixed products and has two lines of production. The one line is primarily for Reuter production and the other line services the other products of ACA. The basic process of producing the feed starts with mixing and steaming the created mix. Then it is processed through an extruder that produces pellets required for the current product. The pellets then travel to an oven to be baked into the final product. After baking, they are sifted to remove any small particles, cooled in a counter-flow cooler, and sent through a process that coats the pellets in a liquid containing various things that enhance the product. The finished pellets then proceed to bagging. The mill had recently  installed a robotic bagging system so all the bags were filled and packaged automatically.

In the afternoon, we journeyed back into Rosario to visit the Rosario Board of Trade. It is the most important grain and grain futures market in Argentina. They still have a trading floor that operates with face to face and verbal contracts, one of the only of its kind in the world. Several people gave us presentations in the afternoon. One focused mainly on the economic significance of the Board and the services it provides to various members of the agricultural community. Another talked about the arbitration portion of the Board. Any farmer or buyer/seller of grain who has a contention of the grain grade they have received can submit samples to the Board and receive a ruling. The last presentation was about the laboratory related to the Board. The lab processes the samples from the grain arbitration cases as well as any other samples sent to them for analysis by various agencies. The Board maintains labs around the country but the one in Rosario is the most important.

After leaving the Board of Trade, we had a couple of hours to kill so we all scattered our separate ways and explored Rosario or took some needed time off at our host families houses. The cap to the night was  a dinner with APOSGRAN. APOSGRAN is an organization of individuals who are in the feed and grain processing industry. The night was filled with food, wine, and good conversations had in Spanish (and English) about farming, family, and a wide variety of topics. We all made it back to our houses by midnight to get ready for whatever the next day has to offer.

Sincerely,

Rebekah & Trace