Week One Thoughts #HogsAbroad in Belgium

First off, I have got to say that I love Ghent. All the buildings are extremely old (many of them being older than the United States) and they all are gorgeous. During the walking tour, we were told some interesting stories about the different guild houses, belfries, and cathedrals all within a few blocks of the hostel… turns out, Belgians, more specifically people from Ghent, tend to be at the forefront of many rebellions and movements throughout history. One of my favorite things about Ghent so far is that because there are so many cathedrals in such a small area that the citizens have repurposed many of them into restaurants, post offices, flea markets, etc. We were told they did this because there has been a sharp decline in the number of weekly churchgoers, and instead of letting the cathedrals fall apart, they’ve turned them into something the city can use.

So, today is our third full day and the jet lag is just now starting to wear off. Besides that, I have really enjoyed the classes. The first day included an introduction of Belgian culture, and the most interesting thing about that class that I remember is that they are heavily influenced by all the countries that have occupied them. We also discussed the possible uses for lipids in industry that would otherwise be thrown out as waste. Oils from many fruits, nuts, and animals can be extracted and refined into biofuels, green diesel, cosmetics, and many more products. This lecture was of extreme interest to me because I could easily see how this topic could be related to chemical engineering in the United States. There is starting to be more of a push for sustainability in the United States, and reusing lipids is something that many industries could take advantage of.

The second day of classes was more oriented towards plants and sustainability issues related to plants. The most fascinating lecture from this day discussed GMO’s and how they’re treated differently in Europe vs the United States. Before this lecture, I didn’t quite know how I felt about GMO’s and this lecture helped clear things up for me. We were taught that most of the negative opinions on GMO’s stemmed from political issues and advertising rather than scientific fact. Massive amounts of research have been released on the GMO’s already present in society, and only a handful of them suggest GMO’s are harmful… and even these papers’ were based on sloppy techniques and data interpretation.

Today has been the most impressive so far. In the morning we visited a company called Ardo and in the afternoon, we visited a public research institution called INAGRO. Ardo is one of the largest distributors of frozen vegetables in Europe, and one of their most impressive features was their commitment to sustainability. They conducted a lot of research focusing on sustainable agriculture and they converted a lot of their waste products into biofuel which they then used to power half of the power their factories needed. INAGRO was especially unique because it was an extremely nice research institution that only existed to serve the public. They conducted many projects in the field of agriculture more specifically with insect farming, aquaculture, aquaponics, mushroom farming and organic farming. It was super interesting to see a government funded institution focusing just on sustainability and educating the public.

So far, I have been impressed with the overall Belgian experience. The cities we’ve visited were very clean and all of the Belgians we’ve met so far have been nice and extremely helpful in regards to navigating the city and immersing us in the culture.

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Chemical Engineering major Harrison Dawson spent the May intersession 2018 in Belgium with our U of A Faculty-Led: Sustainability in the Euro Food System.

Read more from Harrison at https://sites.uark.edu/hdawson/blog/

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