Project

Can Biotechnology Save Africa?

For Americans, corn is a crop that's fed to livestock, fermented into motor fuel or turned into a cheap sweetener. To millions of Africans, corn, or maize as they know it, is a staple food for people of all economic classes. But African farmers already struggle to grow sufficient maize, which is a thirsty, fertilizer-hungry crop. What will happen as the climate changes and the population grows? Kenya alone is expected to need nearly three times as much maize to feed its population in 2050 as it does today.

Successive U.S. administrations have joined American agribusiness interests in arguing that Africans must drop their opposition to genetically modified crops if the continent is going to feed its growing population.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding research that is using technology from biotech giant Monsanto Co. to engineer maize that's much more resistant to drought than conventional varieties. Bill Gates says these new seeds will be vital to boosting African food production. But the crop also would serve the U.S. industry's geopolitical interests: It will be tougher for Europeans to continue resisting biotech food if there is a new GM crop that could be vital to the survival of poor Africans.

But agricultural experts agree that high-tech, high-yielding seeds won't be nearly enough, not when African farmers, who are mostly female, lack the bare essentials of agriculture: access to fertilizer, places to store their crops, adequate roads and dependable markets.

December 14, 2009 | Pulitzer Center

South Africa: The Moth That Eats Corn Crops

Philip Brasher, for the Pulitzer Center, South Africa

Thought moths were a threat to your clothes? They can devastate corn crops, too, and do in eastern and southern Africa. I got my first look at busseola fusca on Friday after hearing about ever since I arrived in Africa to look at the challenges facing farmers here and the potential for biotechnology to increase food production.

December 10, 2009 | Pulitzer Center

South Africa Struggles to Aid Black Farmers

Philip Brasher, for the Pulitzer Center, South Africa

Isaac Khuto, 65, got a late start at farming, but he's making the most of it. Khuto, who has an eighth grade education and lived most of his life under the hated apartheid system. But now he's part of a slowly developing effort to help blacks obtain farmland in a way that avoid the wholesale grab of white farms that destroyed food production in Zimbabwe.

December 08, 2009 | Pulitzer Center

Kenya: Officials Warn of Food Shortage

Philip Brasher, for the Pulitzer Center, Kenya

Kenyans woke to a warning in the nation's largest newspaper, the Daily Nation, that the country could face "an unprecedented food crisis" next year because of the drought that still plagues the Rift Valley and other regions. The problem is that the rainy season is ending without the precipitation expected when farmers planted in October. The Kenyan government provided a billion shillings, or about $13 million, in farm inputs to encourage the October planting, according to the newspaper.

December 06, 2009 | Pulitzer Center

Kenya: At the Paradise Hotel

Philip Brasher, for the Pulitzer Center, Kenya

Ask a typical American what corn means to him or her, and you're likely to get a blank stare, unless they've read The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan's best seller, or watched a movie like Food Inc. That person may say corn has taken over the American diet, caused the U.S. obesity crisis and contributed to environmental degradation. Corn, after all, is used in some way to produce everything from meat to snack chips and soft drinks.

But ask poor east Africans what corn, or maize, means to them and they'll tell you it is what sustains life.