Within U.S. governmental, university and private-sector partnerships, researchers are working on new agricultural technologies that can help poor countries end food scarcity and malnutrition. Among these innovations are improved crop varieties, more effective fertilizers, new livestock vaccines and new food-processing techniques.
At the International Fertilizer and Development Center (IFDC) in Alabama, chemist Amit Roy works with scientists from many countries to develop a fertilizer that can be absorbed by soil easily and help farmers take full advantage of improved seed varieties on nitrogen-deficient farmland. Because the new fertilizer is more efficient than traditional ones, farmers can use less of it, reducing their costs and residue runoff, Roy said.
U.S. university researchers have been working on projects that range from crops with special qualities to technologies for transporting produce.
At Purdue University in Indiana, Bruce Hameker and his international colleagues want to develop a more digestible variety of sorghum, allowing consumers to absorb better the grain's protein. Sorghum is a primary crop in the dry Sahel area and a secondary crop in other African nations. It also is a choice food for people who cannot digest the gluten found in wheat, he said.
Philip Nelson, another Purdue researcher, developed technologies that allow the large-scale storage and long-distance transportation of acidic fruit and vegetable products. Those technologies have helped increase people's access to food around the world, he said. Nelson is the 2007 World Food Prize recipient.
Lloyd Rooney at Texas A&M University is helping sorghum and millet farmers and processors in Africa provide debris-free, milled grains to urban consumers. Urban residents like the easy-cooking cereals that can be eaten alone, or combined with other foods for more balanced nutrition.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS), with 100 locations in the United States and other countries, provides another venue for research efforts that can benefit developing countries.
At the ARS center in North Dakota, scientists are trying to make cassava, a staple food for millions of Africans, higher yielding and more resistant to pests and disease. At other centers, researchers develop varieties of bacterial- and viral-resistant dry beans and collaborate with Kenya's agricultural research institute and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center on identifying wheat resistance to stem rust, a disease found in eastern Africa.
Other ARS projects include developing a variety of wheat that can grow in soils containing high amounts of growth-restricting aluminum and creating rice that is resistant to a damaging fungus. Intensive cultivation of rice has caused stronger strains of the fungus to appear in parts of Asia.
In addition, U.S. scientists have been working on projects designed to help ranchers. One result of their work is a promising vaccine to protect cattle, swine and goats from foot-and-mouth disease. The disease, found throughout the world, rarely transmits to humans but can cause severe losses in meat and milk production.
USINFO