GEAPS took a step toward fulfilling our mission to champion, connect and serve the global grain industry and our members recently with VICTAM/LatAm. We partnered with VICTAM International to host our first ever event in South America! The event took place October 3-5, 2023, in São Paulo, Brazil.   VICTAM hosts conferences and expos in Europe, Asia and the Middle East with a large network of companies in the feed and milling industries. The conference was co-located with GRAPAS LatAm. This was the first VICTAM event in Latin America.   Victam LatAm offered top tier networking and conferencing held by GEAPS and other relevant partners in feed and grain processing/handling industries. GEAPS organized two days of educational speakers and many exhibitors chose to exhibit in GEAPS Pavilion on the expo show floor. The educational sessions were well attended and people were engaged. Attendees were able to wear headsets to hear the program translated.   GEAPS’ Vice President Austin Carpenter, a member of the Hoosier chapter and sales manager at Clear Creek and Associates, traveled to Brazil for the conference. While he was there, Carpenter sat down with Jim Lenz.   In an on-the ground report. Austin shares his experiences and observations from the event, highlighting the global representation with attendees from around 30 countries, the quality of the trade show floor with a focus on high-capacity processing and storage solutions, and the importance of networking and education within the grain industry. The episode offers a firsthand look at the grain industry and the global connections it fosters.  About the guest: Austin Carpenter is sales manager at Clear Creek & Associates Inc, Crown Point, Indiana. CCA is an engineering firm that designs grain elevators, export and transloading facilities and utilizes 3D scanning technology to layout new mill expansions or reworks. CCA performs field inspections on aging facilities with questionable structures and, if repairable, supplies drawings for the repair or modification.  Carpenter has been a GEAPS member since 2010 and was elected in 2018 as an Associates Board director and representative to the GEAPS Board of Directors.  He was elected second vice president of GEAPS Board of Directors in 2022 and became First Vice President in 2023. He is active in the Hoosier Chapter and the Great Lakes Regional Conference planning committee and serves on the Exchange Futures Committee.   Episode Topics: First impressions of Victam LatAm What it means to be a part of the GEAPS family and how it was exemplified here at Victam LatAm Overall description of the event Global representation Education and Networking Themes and trends discovered on the trade show floor GEAPS is hosting their Annual GEAPS Exchange Conference at the Kansas City Convention Center February 24th – 27th. Learn more at www.geaps.com/exchange. Grain Elevator and Processing Society champions, connects and serves the global grain industry and its members. Be sure to visit GEAPS’ website to learn how you can grow your network, support your personal professional development, and advance your career. Thank you for listening to another episode of GEAPS’ Whole Grain podcast.