Soil scientist Pedro Sanchez, the chairman of the U.N. Millennium Project Task Force on World Hunger, was slated to receive the World Food Prize today in the United States for his work in creating a low-tech sustainable program for boosting sub-Saharan crop yields by up to four times their previous size.

"The soils in Africa are very shallow and often depleted after years of intense use," World Food Program North American Director Charles Riemenschneider said, calling Sanchez's work "very important."

Part of Sanchez's program involves planting fast-growing trees along with the local staple corn at the beginning of the rainy season to add nitrogen to the soil.  "Normally you solve this problem with mineral fertilizer, but they're atrociously expensive in Africa," Sanchez said, citing costs 200 to 600 percent higher than elsewhere.  The trees are cut down before the next planting cycle, with the mulched leaves providing up to 494 pounds of nitrogen per acre to the soil.  The resulting wood can also be used as fuel for fires.

The program, which also adds phosphorous to the soil and uses mulched Mexican sunflowers to add other nutrients, can double or quadruple corn production.

One effect of the program can be to raise girls' education levels, Sanchez said.  "Because the women are raising the crops, they're becoming more empowered," he says.  "Those trees belong to the women.  And they're using the extra money for school fees for their daughters."

Sanchez's award, sometimes called the "Nobel Prize" of agriculture, was announced in August (Elizabeth Weise, USA Today, Oct. 24).