Sometimes human progress comes in a flash, with a brilliant breakthrough by
an individual genius. More often, it comes incrementally over decades with
contributions from more than one individual.
The World Food Prize
Foundation this year found a way to honor the latter kind of progress. Its 2006
prize will be shared by three men whose work has spanned a
half-century.
Together, and with the efforts of many others as well, they
are said to have opened more new land to farming than has occurred at any time
since settlement of the American Midwest more than a hundred years
ago.
They made farming possible in the previously barren Cerrado high
plains of Brazil, an area three times the size of Texas.
"It's an
enormous accomplishment that no one person could have done," said foundation
president Kenneth Quinn.
The opening of the Cerrado raised the standard
of living in Brazil and may have shown the way to farm millions more
unproductive acres elsewhere in South America and in Africa. "Hundreds of
millions of people will benefit from this work," said Nobel Peace Prize laureate
and Food Prize founder Norman Borlaug in a press release.
The prize will
go to:
• A. Colin McClung, an American soil scientist whose studies in
the 1950s demonstrated how to neutralize the acidity and toxic levels of
aluminum in Cerrado soil.
• Alysson Paolinelli, who served as both state
and national secretary of agriculture in Brazil and was instrumental in
establishing EMBRAPA, an agricultural research center, and initiating a program
for agricultural and rural development in the Cerrado.
• Edson Lobato, a
Brazilian agronomist who worked at EMBRAPA, carried forward the work of McClung
and collaborated in bringing new technologies to farmers to transform the
region.
This year's Food Prize may not be without controversy. The
opening of the Cerrado brought major new competition for American soybean
producers, and its conversion to high-yield agriculture threatens the existence
of a unique ecosystem.
The Cerrado is a savanna with wildlife that
includes the giant anteater and jaguar and an estimated 10,000 plant species, a
large share of them exclusive to the region. International environmental
organizations have listed the Cerrado as a hot spot for threatened loss of
biodiversity, saying the native ecosystem could disappear by about
2030.
In that respect, the Cerrado might be comparable to the tallgrass
prairie of the Midwest, a magnificent ecosystem that all but disappeared under
the plow.
The world must encourage Brazil to do a better job than the
United States did in setting aside large tracts of its virgin lands to preserve
the original flora and fauna.
Meanwhile, it's entirely fitting to
celebrate the (literally) groundbreaking work of McClung, Paolinelli and Lobato.
Whenever barren land becomes productive, the human condition improves. Those who
enable it deserve humanity's applause.