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Soil Fertility and Hunger in Africa

Sanchez, Pedro A.·2002·Science

Abstract

The fundamental biophysical cause of stagnant per capita food production in Africa is soil fertility depletion. Because mineral fertilizers cost two to six times as much as those sold worldwide, a soil fertility replenishment approach has been developed based on naturally available resources: nitrogen-fixing leguminous tree fallows that accumulate 100 to 200 kg N ha, indigenous rock phosphate applications, and biomass transfers of the nutrient-accumulating shrub Tithonia diversifolia. Tens of thousands of farmers in East and Southern Africa are becoming food secure with these technologies. Soil fertility depletion must be addressed before other technologies and policies can become effective in overcoming hunger in Africa.

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Metadata

Authors
Sanchez, P. A.
Venue
Science
Published
2002-03-15
Volume
295
Issue
5562
Pages
2019-2020
ISSN
  • 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
  • 1095-9203
OpenAlex
W1488574179
Cited by
1,180
References
0
FWCI
47.77
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Soil Fertility and Hunger in Africa. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1126/science.1065256
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Sanchez, P. A. (2002). Soil Fertility and Hunger in Africa. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1065256

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Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.