Today marked the day that we travelled to Rotterdam. Unfortunately, our first train got cancelled on the way to the city so the rest of the day we spent making up the time that we lost getting to Rotterdam. Rotterdam itself is extremely different from the city of Amsterdam because of the fact that most of Rotterdam is completely modern as a result of the second world war and the destruction that it caused to the city. This modern layout of a city is very similar to an American city such as Los Angelous because of the modern building aspects of both cities. Our first visit in the city of Rotterdam was to the floating farm company site. Our presenter Minke described how her, and her husband sought to solve the problem of sustainable farming by creating a circular business that allows farmers to expand on sustainable areas such as the water. This company model originated when Minke’s husband experienced a hurricane in New York city that completely crippled the food market of the city. Their business idea of a floating farm solves this problem by allowing many different places to have quick and easy access to fresh produce. In Rotterdam their only farm of this nature is the one that we visited today and only produces produce that comes from cows, however, they have plans to expand to different areas of farming in the future.

During Minke’s presentation she delve in depth into how their cow farm actually works. She described how the company actually gets their food products from the cows mainly from areas in the city. They get their products from beer broth, food banks from the city, and the professional club soccer team’s field in Rotterdam. Minke described how this is much cheaper than transporting normal grass and cow food products to the floating farm. Therefore, in the concept to consumer business chain their cow food products come from extremely different places than normal cow farms. We also were able to tour the actual farm and interact with the cows. They were extremely calm throughout the whole process even though they smelled strongly of manure. She also talked about how they also are able to sell their manure to places in the city which is abnormal for a cow farm as most cow farms have to pay to get rid or compost their manure.

The rest of the day saw us travel to the restaurant Bazaar for dinner. The food was extremely good tonight, and everyone enjoyed a nice dinner full of kababs, rice, and soup. Tomorow marks the day in which we first travel to the Waterloopein museum in Rotterdam and then head back to Amsterdam itself.