Go East ALOT Crew

So now we are in catch up mode because Friday we spent in the airport jetting off to another land, that land…. The Czech Republic. That's right, due east of France on the other side of Germany is where we woke up Saturday morning. We are staying in the university dorms in Prague. Not the fanciest digs we've seen but a pillow and a shower so no reason to complain. The university works a lot with the University of Missouri. In fact, we've seen several students from MU here on the college exchange program. Seems like a great opportunity for the young folks to expand their horizons. In hind sight, would have been an intelligent move while I was in college. I didn't take the opportunity then, but thankfully I've had the chance to experience other cultures through my career in broadcasting.
Saturday we spent the day on campus visiting with university professors about the Czech Republic and the country's ag industry. We pulled together some interesting details too. As you can tell, Jeremy Hayward, an agronomist with MFA, Tim Coppage with Cargill Grain and Glenn Cope, a cattle producer from Southwest Missouri were all paying close attention.
According to Professor Cibulka, there are several interesting differences between the US and the CR. For example, in Czech pork is the number one product on dinner tables and coming in second is poultry. It also turns out that fresh water fish production is very popular. According to Cibulka the top fresh water fish in the country is actually Carp.
Another example, sheep are not used for wool production in the CR because wool is a cheap import from New Zealand and Australia. Instead Czech farmers use sheep primarily for milk production which is then used for cheese. So the next big question, where's the beef? Apparently the cost of beef is so high it's not on the top list for dinner plates in the country.
We did get to tour around the city a little over the weekend. Like France, the place is full of history and amazing architecture. My camera pooped out on me but I did get a couple shots in beforehand.











































Now for other comparisons.. In France last week the cost of food seemed crazy high. Of course the US dollar is weak compared with the Euro. That has some impact on food prices, but the food in France just in general is more expensive. If you were just paying for the food in US dollars without any conversion it was still much higher than the US. In the Czech Republic, although they are a member of the European Union but they don't use the Euro. Instead they still use their own currency which is referred to as Crown. The dollar is stronger than the Crown and, for many of us, our exchange rate was about 13 Crown to 1 US dollar. That sounds good when you get a large number of bills to fill your wallet, but over the weekend we noticed the cost of food and some other items in the Czech Republic are still more expensive than the United States. For example, yesterday we wanted a little taste of home so we had a quick stop at a fast food chain found that can also be found in the United States.
Two pieces of chicken, two sodas, and two fries, averaged about $17 US dollars. In addition, they wanted an additional 60 cents to add ketchup for the fries.

We chose not to have ketchup just because it's wrong.