|
 The region of São Luiz dos Montes Belos, in the mid-western Brazilian state of Goiás, is becoming a reference in terms of workforce specialized in agribusiness. Ever since the establishment of the Milk Production Cluster (APL), in 2003, two technical courses in Milk Culture were created.
Two higher education courses were also started in the Goiás State University: Agribusiness Management and Dairy Technology.
Also implemented was a Technological Milk Center (CTL) at the University Farm School, in the city of São Luís de Montes Belos.
The establishment of CTL is being managed by the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) Milk Cattle unit, and its structure includes a milk farm-school scheduled for inauguration in September.
"The center is going to train milk farm workers and create new milk derivatives, such as cheeses and yogurts," according to Jesus Camargo da Silva, president of the Association of Milk Producers of São Luís de Montes Belos and Surroundings (AproLeite).
According to Camargo, courses specializing in agribusiness are the solution to one of the main problems facing producers: the shortage of specialized professionals to provide quality to the local production.
"We are still producing milk the way we learned from our parents, who in turn have learned from our grandparents. In order to grow, we need specialized technicians to help professionalize our production," said Camargo. He believes that the courses are one of the best results achieved to date by the APL cluster.
"We have given over 20 courses in rural settings, directly to producers. Our goal is to become the most organized cluster in the state of Goiás by 2014", he said.
Camargo explained that the cluster was created through articulations between the state government and other public organizations and institutions, the private sector, and support organizations such as the Brazilian Micro and Small Business Support Service (Sebrae).
Presently, the cluster includes 5,000 milk producers, mostly from micro and small farms in 18 different municipalities, including São Luiz dos Montes Belos and the other 17 that surround it. Active workforce is estimated to exceed 12,000 people.
Currently, 424,000 liters of milk are produced daily. The aim is to achieve a 30% increase in milk production in the periods between crops in 2007, and another 30% in 2008, to cater to the demand from the local milk derivatives industry, which processes 715,000 liters of milk a day.
Some of this milk is brought in from other micro-regions. Another goal is to achieve, by December 2008, a 16% increase in gross revenues from the sector's industries.
To that extent, several actions have already been developed, including the technical assistance sector, since the lack of technical efficiency from producers is one of the main problems.
Another objective is to seek resources for implementing the actions devised by APL members for the development of the project.
According to Benedito Cardoso Laureano, development manager for Western Goiás, a branch of the State Secretariat for Development of the State of Goiás, at least three actions have already been defined, for which APL will shop for resources from the federal government.
"One of these actions is the implementation of a technical and managerial assistance service specially designed for the milking activity, an innovation which will benefit from the methodology of Educampo, a project of Sebrae that offers technological and managerial capacitation to groups of rural producers," he explained.
Service:
AproLeite
Tel: (+55 64) 3671-1090
Anba - www.anba.com.br
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.