Back in Chicago.
This is where our agricultural tour of the U.S. Midwest began two weeks ago. And today, our route has brought us back to Chicago.
Over these two weeks, we traveled about 7,000 kilometers through seven states. We visited farms, production facilities, universities, extension services, and agricultural laboratories.
Different soil and climate conditions. Different farming systems. Different experiences.
It was symbolic that our journey ended at one of Chicago’s best-known landmarks, Cloud Gate, better known as The Bean, which reflects everything around it.
At The Bean in Chicago on the final day of our agricultural tour of the U.S. Midwest.
Perhaps this journey became a kind of mirror for me as well.
It didn’t so much reveal anything fundamentally new as confirm something I had already suspected: the challenges facing agriculture are very similar on both sides of the ocean.
Drought. Erosion. Economic pressures. Soil health. The future of farms and the question of who will carry on the work.
It is not the problems that differ. It is the approaches to solving them.
And one more observation stayed with me after this trip: sustainable solutions almost always begin with the soil.
Whether in Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, or Ukraine.
But the most valuable part of trips like this is the people.
The conversations with farmers, scientists, professors, consultants, and students stay with you the longest. Through them, you see more than individual technologies or successful solutions. You begin to understand why people are changing their approaches and what they hope to achieve.
Thank you to everyone I had the opportunity to meet along the way.
Now it’s time to head home and take some time to make sense of everything I’ve seen.