Sweet and sustainable visit

By Liberal Arts Student, Luke Green

On Wednesday, the Green Business class  for Liberal Arts Program went on a visit to a dairy factory owned by La Serenisima in the Province of Buenos Aires. La Serenisima is the largest dairy provider in Argentina, and also provides dairy products like cheese, milk, yogurt, and its famous "dulce de leche" to other countries in South America and the world. The goal of our tour was to see how a company like this organizes, ships, and sells its product, all the way from the cow to the market. Our other challenge was to think about whether or not this company is a "sustainable business". 

Our tour guide took us all throughout the factory which was like a small city. We learned how the milk travels from the farm fields from the interior of Argentina to the factories, where the milk is pasteurized and then shipped to different parts of the factory to be developed in to different products. The smell wasn't always great, but we saw how some milk is turned in to powder, ricotta cheese, and dulce de leche. We saw how machines package the products to be shipped to the market. Dulce de Leche is an important part of Argentinean food culture. “Dulce de Leche” roughly translates to “Sweet Milk”. However, it is similar to caramel (but don’t tell that to an Argentine), and tastes very sweet. You eat it with crackers, medialunas, chocotorta, and other kinds of desserts. The history behind the creation of the product is funny because the myth is that dulce de leche was created by accident. As the story goes, when Juan Manuel de Rosas met with Juan Lavalle to settle a civil war in 1828, the two heated up milk to prepare “Lechada”, a kind of warm milk that was common to drink then. However, they got distracted and the milk burned. The burned milk gave off a very sweet smell and the two generals realized the delicacy that they had accidentally created. Thus, dulce de leche was created and remains to this day very popular in all of Latin America.

 At the end of the tour, we got to try all different kinds of products that are made by La Serenisima (one of my favorite parts). Overall, this experience was a great way to see how what we learned in the classroom is applied in real life. The principles of sustainability were noticeable all throughout the factory tour and it was a fantastic experience!