ILEAD Class 7 Mission part 2

ON MARCH 11,12 &13 THE IA CORN I LEAD GROUP HAD SOME VERY SUCCESSFUL DAYS. 
 

At this point we were mostly over our jet lag but continued to have very early mornings. March 11th we left Manilla in the morning bound for Dumaguete which was just over an hr flight south of Manilla. While in Dumaguete we had one of the best days of the mission, this of which is a personal reference but was a good day for what we saw and the knowledge we gained.
 

URC Sugar Mill hosted the group for a tour of the sugar mill as well as the co-located ethanol plant. A couple of the groups objectives for the mission were to see an ethanol plant which utilized an alternative feedstock other than corn and to see the different types of crop production in the countries we were traveling too. We started with the sugar mill and walked through the entire process; from unloading of the cane to pressing the cane, grinding the cane, spinning impurities out to get a final product of sugar. This ethanol facility was ran on molasses from the sugar process, although the technology is very similar to the US ethanol plants it was good to see the diversification of utilizing other feedstock sources other than corn.
 

After which we stopped along the raod and talked with some growers as they were harvesting the cane. The debate of the group was if you had to pick a job, would you rather work in the hot sugar mill or be out in the sun cutting and loading cane? I am still not sure what the conscious was. But both jobs paid nearly the US minimum wage that we get in an hr and they get this for a full day of work.
 

Upon returning to Manilla the following day we visited a fish farm. This visit was also well liked as the farm we visited was a lake that was formed from a very large volcano from several yr before. This particular farm had over 600 cages which consisted of 40,000 to 70,000 fish, mostly Tilapia, per cage. Talked about the growing process, feeding, marketing and how supply demand effects the local fish market.
 

Sunday was a fun filled day visiting Corregidor Island which had a lot of history from WWII. We had some people on the mission that had relation stationed on this island during the war.