Two weeks ago, we welcomed Andre Simores to Cornell, a visiting agricultural economist who spoke to us about life in Brazil and the agricultural economy. He had spoken to us about his experience being a professor at Brazil, and the differences between American educational institutions and Brazilian educational institutions. In his opinion, American institutions are much more prosperous than Brazilian institutions. To me, likely reasons for this are that American institutions are largely research facilities, and therefore draw faculty who want to do research. Furthermore, the cost of attendance is 60k+ a year, and therefore the university receives funding to provide the best educational opportunities possible.

I enjoyed the part of the talk when Simores used google maps and google images, with the aid of his girlfriend, to show us the geography of Brazil, and the locations of the cities that he lived in and other populated cities. I was not familiar with the geography of Brazil nor the scenery and agriculture, and enjoyed this casual way of becoming better affiliated with it. Before this talk, I was only really familiar with Rio de Janiro due to the olympics.

Finally, as he is an agriculture economist, Simores also spoke to us about the agricultural economy in Brazil. He stated that Brazil’s agricultural economy was not nearly as well developed as the United States’ in some parts.

Altogether, I really enjoyed the insight Simores had to offer on various topics, and enjoyed his cafe.