Day 4, Friday May 13, 2016

Lindsey Summers

Overview

• Left Netherlands and travelled to Belgium
• Visited and had lunch provided by the ILVO Research Institute
•  Toured a Belgium Blue Cattle farm
• Settled in Ghent Belgium

Today was definitely another busy day for us all! We spent the night at the StayOkay hostel in the Netherlands and they provided us a nice size buffet for breakfast. Afterwards, we left the Netherlands and travelled to Belgium to visit ILVO. ILVO is a research institute that strives to improve agriculture, horticulture, and fisheries in Flanders (northern) Belgium and worldwide. We were introduced to the company and learned many interesting facts about farms and agriculture in Belgium.

This facility belongs to their government and uses applied research to promote sustainability and serves farmers with various services. The next lesson was regarding soil quality and compost. Factors such as phosphorus, carbon, nitrogen and other molecules affect soil quality immensely and most of these factors are an ongoing problem in Belgium and globally. We were able to have a short field trip to ILVO’s compost facility and actually see the final product.

Afterwards, we were served a lovely lunch with sandwiches provided by ILVO. We then toured ILVO’s greenhouses where plant research is occurring. So many research projects and ideas were ongoing and we greatly appreciated the faculty for educating us all about it!

From ILVO, we travelled to a Belgium Blue Cattle farm to tour their facilities. By the time we arrived, we were able to witness a veterinarian performing a Caesarian section on one of the cows. Such an educational experience! Belgium Blue Cattle are known for their gene mutation in their muscles which causes the cattle in utero to have more muscle fibers form than normal cattle. Whenever a calf is born, it has well defined muscles that are characteristic to this breed. Since the calves have more muscle mass than normal, cows are not able to undergo normal parturition and are in need of a Caesarian section. Everyone was able to witness this process and able to socialize with the facility’s cute calves!

After the farm trip, we settled down in our new hostel for the night, the Ghent Merelbeke Hostel. It is nicely placed in a wooded area of Belgium and we were graced to stay in a large area with great facilities! We are looking forward to a night of good company and fun while getting the much imperative rest we need for tomorrow! Goeie nacht! (Goodnight in Flemish)