One talk at the AIBS meeting in May on sustainable agriculture stood out both for its immediacy and for the challenge it represents to established wisdom. Pedro A. Sanchez, recipient of the 2002 World Food Prize and director of the Tropical Agriculture and the Rural Environment Program at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, told rapt attendees about the latest results from an initiative that is being called the “Malawi miracle.” Malawi, a landlocked country of poor farmers, faced a food crisis in 2005, the result of drought, floods, and a disastrous maize harvest




























