Des Moines Register
06-15-06
World Food Prize goes to 3 who helped in Brazil
PHILIP BRASHER
REGISTER WASHINGTON BUREAU
Washington, D.C. – An American scientist and two Brazilians have been
awarded the 2006 World Food Prize for their work in turning Brazil into one of the
world’s agricultural powerhouses.
A. Colin McClung’s pioneering soil fertility research in the 1950s showed that
applications of lime and nutrients could dramatically increase crop yields in
Brazil’s vast Cerrado region, once a brush-covered savannah. The Portugese
name means “closed, inaccessible land.”
The other two recipients are H.E. Alysson Paolinelli, who developed credit and
rural development programs and increased crop research as Brazil’s minister of
agriculture in the 1970s, and Edson Lobato, a top Brazilian soil specialist who
expanded on McClung’s work.
This is the first year that the $250,000 prize has been awarded to more than two
people.
“This increased agricultural production has helped improve economic and social
conditions in Brazil, while their research continues to promote agricultural
development and poverty alleviation in other tropical and sub-tropical countries
throughout the world,” said Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize
Foundation.
The research also helped make Brazil a leading competitor of soybean farmers in
the United States, especially in soybeans.
Brazil more than tripled its agricultural production between 1970 and 2000 and
last year had nearly 100 million acres in cultivation. That is an area equivalent to
the combined planted acreage last year of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and
Nebraska.
McClung, 82, was a scientist at what is now North Carolina State University when
he was sent to Brazil to work on restoring frost-damaged coffee plantations.
While there, he got permission to work on improving the poor soils he found. He
showed that applications of lime would neutralize the toxic levels of aluminum
and added nutrients such as phosphorus, potassium, nitrogen.
The results were astonishing: Test plots of corn produced up to 100 bushels per
acre, while untreated control plots might produce nothing at all, he said. In 1960,
the average corn yield in Iowa was less than 64 bushels per acre.
Cotton and soybeans did similarly well.
“We found enormous interest on the part of the Brazilian farmers,” he said.
Brazil’s success has made it a major rival of the United States, especially in
selling soybeans and cotton to China. Brazil produced 58.5 million metric tons of
soybeans last year, second only to the U.S. crop of 84 million.
“The driver is really the cheap land, and you have reasonably good weather,”
said Jacinto Fabiosa, a specialist in foreign agriculture at Iowa State
University.
Brazil’s one big drawback remains its poor transportation system for shipping
crops to market, he said.
Lobato said Brazil’s agricultural success reduced the cost of food in the country
by 5 percent a year, making it possible for people to spend more on health,
education and entertainment.
“I believe that competition, to a certain extent, is good for … mankind,” he said in
an email to a reporter.
McClung believes the lessons learned from using lime and fertilizer in Brazil
could be applied in other regions, including Africa, a position shared by Norman
Borlaug, the Nobel Prize laureate who founded the World Food Prize.
“Eventually, the Cerrado technology, or one similar to it, will move into the llanos
in Colombia and Venezuela and hopefully, into central and southern Africa where
similar soil problems are found,” said Borlaug.
Development of the Cerrado has not been without environmental costs.
Farming has destroyed habitat for frogs, birds and other species, and additional
habitat the size of New Jersey is cleared each year, said John Buchanan,
director of agriculture and fisheries for Conservation International, a Washingtonbased group.
To curb the damage, his group is working to get farmers to comply with a law that
requires 20 percent of their acreage to set aside for natural habitat.
“We need agriculture. We don’t intend to stop it in Brazil, but we need smarter
and better agriculture,” Buchanan said.