Farm and Itaipu

Today was our last day together. Tomorrow we all head to the airport and go our respective ways. Our day started out with a trip to a farm. There were cows and pigs there, so I bet you can imagine what it smelled like. 

Our purpose for visiting the farm was to learn a little about the biogas system that they use there. The farmers collect the maure from the pigs and it has to stay in the bio digester for 28 days. Afterwards the leftover sludge can be used to fertilize the crop fields. In Brazil, manure can't be placed straight onto the fields, it has to be treated first. The farmers grow corn, and raise cattle and pigs for slaughter.  They have 5,000 pigs and a total of 300 cows. The farm is a family business in its 3rd generation. We met the current owners son, but he didn't speak any English. The farm produces about .4 MW of energy a day with the biogas system. Their system is pretty old and therefore not as efficient as it could be. 

After our farm visit, we went to visit the Itaipu Dam. Itaipu means rock that sings. Itaipu is a neutral ground for Brazil and Paraguay because they both own 50% of it. The two countries each get 50% of the power produced, the nationalities of the employees are split  50/50, etc.  Itaipu built a chanel so that fish that were disturbed due to the presence of the reservoir could still migrate past the dam.  There are 190 different species of fish. This project took 20 years to figure out what the best solution would be to help the migrating fish. The location where Itaipu stands was chosen because of the basalt rock that resides in the area, it would be strong enough to handle the weight of the dam. the dam handles 40 times more water than the average flow at the Iguaçu water falls (which we visited yesterday) that's a ton of water!! 

Something that I found interesting, was the worker's wood. Apparently employees that have been working for Itaipu for 15 years can plant a tree. Itaipu also has a program called Cultivating Good Water.  They also have a statue representing the workers. I guess the staff would have olympic games and they built this statue out of leftover parts from building the dam.

And, today was another hard hat day! Plus we wore little hair nets and these fancy headphone speaker sets.

We are about to head out for our farewell dinner. 

The next time you hear from me will be when I am back in the states.

Tchau!