At the invitation of the Rabobank, 80 foreign dairy farmers visited The Netherlands last week. The farmers are full of praise about the Dutch dairy farmers and in their opinion there is a lack of efficiency and knowledge in their own countries.
One of the farmers, Ricardo Rios Pohl from Chili visited Bles Dairies Farm. Ricardo has a modern dairy farm with, including young stock, 9.000 cows and 4.500 hectare grassland. Bles Dairies Farm, with 120 milk cows, wasn’t quite overwhelming in his eyes, but Ricardo was very impressed by its high productivity and Bles Dairies’ world wide experience in consultancy activities.
A few years ago Ricardo Rios Pohl started his dairy farm because his wife had the wish to have one cow. One wasn’t enough for Ricardo and from that moment he decided to start a dairy farm. And not just any.. Mr Rios now employs 130 staff and his dairy business is completely self sufficient from growing its own pasture and seeds for the other produced crops, through building its own infrastructure and implementation of in-house IT systems.
So what can he learn from the Dutch dairy specialists? Ricardo’s most important mission in The Netherlands was to establish contacts with dairy experts to invite them to Chili so they can train his staff. Ricardo told us he is also very impressed by the cooperation competences he sees in The Netherlands. He is eager to learn from the knowledge and experience from the Dutch dairy cooperation’s.
We want to thank Ricardo and Rabobank for his visit and the interesting discussions!
