Over the past 5 days we have had the great opportunity to travel around the country of Brazil. Fortunately, we will have a few more days to learn. We have seen a lot, but we have only seen a portion of this country and their people. One thing for sure is that we have seen a country that is very diverse in their people and their land.

The people of this country have a lot of similarities of those in the US. Both countries have a native population. We have seen many immigrants over the last 200 plus years in the United States. Brazil also had many people settle within their borders as well. Many of these groups were also from Europe and Asia and they still hold true to their past. You can find these groups living together in similar areas. You can look around and see people that look very similar to people in Minnesota, but they do not have a Minnesota accent. We have found the people we have worked with to be very friendly, which would be very similar to Minnesota. The people of Brazil also know a lot more about us then we know about them. They watch television shows from our country like CNN and are concerned about our trade policies. How many of us really know a lot about our own country, let alone others.

The other great diversity of their country is the land. We know of the huge flat cropland in the Matto Grosso region of the country. All you can see is fields for miles and miles. We are not even traveling to that region, but we have seen areas around Sao Paulo and Londrina that have rolling hills with a large variety of crops like sugarcane, soybeans, corn, cassava, castor bean, wheat, coffee, oranges, rubber trees, etc. They also have huge terraced and rolling pastures where their livestock graze. This area contains a lot of the potential cropland area of their country. What a vast country and a great opportunity to learn more about one of the large agricultural export countries.