US scientist helps African soil bloom
Date: 23-Aug-02
Country: USA
Author: Julie Ingwersen
But research by Sanchez has shown that the soil in poor tropical regions isn't all bad. All it usually needs to produce good crops is a little love - and nitrogen and phosphorus.
Sanchez, a visiting professor of tropical resources at the University of California, Berkeley, has helped teach 150,000 small-holder farmers in Africa how to boost grain production by bettering their dirt - that is, by replenishing soil nutrients with cheap, locally available resources such as trees and rocks.
As a result, those farmers can feed their families without turning to forests for better land.
Sanchez received the 2002 World Food Prize, awarded each year to an individual whose work combats world hunger. He will receive the $250,000 prize at a ceremony in Ames, Iowa, in October.
"Dr. Sanchez is ... being honored for having played a critical role in establishing real alternatives to slash-and-burn farming, which has destroyed millions of acres of rain forest," Kenneth Quinn, president of the Iowa-based World Food Prize Foundation, said in a statement.
The World Food Prize, founded in 1986, was conceived by Norman Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work improving grain production in Asia.
FIGHT AGAINST HUNGER STARTS WITH SOIL
Sanchez preaches the gospel of agroforestry, in which farmers plant trees in combination with other crops. In sub-Saharan Africa, farmers too poor to afford fertilizer can instead plant native leguminous trees, which convert nitrogen from the air into their leaves.
Following a growing season, the farmers then cut the trees, use the wood for fuel and plow the leaves under. As they decompose, the tree leaves release nitrogen in the same way a conventional fertilizer would. The added nutrients help the soil produce higher yields for food crops.
"There are about 150,000 farmers throughout east and southern Africa who are practicing this who tell you flat out, they are no longer hungry," Sanchez told Reuters in a telephone interview. "We are solving the problem of soil fertility in Africa using natural resources from Africa."
A native of Cuba who grew up on a farm, Sanchez moved to the United States in 1958 to enroll at Cornell University, where he eventually earned his doctorate.
In the 1970s, Sanchez headed an effort to practice soil management in the Cerrado, an area of Brazil roughly equivalent in size to Western Europe that was considered poor farmland because of its highly acidic soil.
"Everybody thought the soils were no good," Sanchez said.
Soil management techniques developed by Sanchez and others helped turn millions of acres in the Cerrado into highly productive land that contributed to Brazil's emergence as a soybean-growing powerhouse, second only to the United States.
SPREADING THE WORD TO AFRICAN FARMERS
Those techniques, Sanchez said, relied on mechanization and were designed for Brazil's large tracts of land. Sanchez's more recent efforts in Africa target much smaller farms, and his work in promoting soil management and agroforestry among the continent's poorest farmers is far from over.
Sanchez said he would use the World Food Prize money, and his position as chair of a United Nations task force on world hunger, toward his goal of teaching agroforestry to 150 million African farmers.
"The rest of the world is still crucially important, but the most acute problems are in Africa," Sanchez said.