Friday Touring.

Friday was spent touring around Piracicaba-- seeing the central market (much like the North Market in Columbus) and visiting the Cathedral in the town square. We were able to spend some time shopping, walking around, and took a lot of cool pictures. After lunch in the downtown area-- we headed down by the Piracicaba river and took more pictures at an old abandoned sugarcane mill.
We spend the afternoon touring Coplacana-- a local sugarcane cooperative. Coplacana has its headquarters in Piracicaba, but has several branch locations to serve all of its members. We were able to tour their office building, their seed and animal feed divisions, chemical warehouse and their supply store. They were truly a full service co-op-- complete with a automotive center to help their farmers out with anything they needed. After leaving Coplacana we headed outside Piracicaba to visit a new biodiesel plant. The new plant will be online in about 10 months-- and will be able to process several different grains to produce biodiesel. This was one of my favorite stops thus far, as I was able to ask a lot of questions to help compare and contrast the differences between biodiesel and ethanol production.