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To Inherit the Earth: A Question of Survival was produced by the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), based in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, U.S.A., and AGCOM International, which specializes in videos on agriculture and the environment. IFDC helps develop better agribusiness systems, and conducts research to improve soil health and, thus, the health of plants and humans they support in developing countries.

"That gives us not only the opportunity, but also the awesome responsibility to leave our children--and their children--a healthier soil, and a better future," says IFDC President Dr. Amit Roy.

The 27-minute video documents how Marbau and Kissem and their five children eke a sparse living from the land in Togo, West Africa, where most people survive on about one U.S. dollar a day. For centuries their ancestors cleared brush, grew two or three crops, then left the land fallow for several years, so that the soil could regain its fertility.

But the soil can no longer rest; it must feed too many people. Population across Africa is increasing about 3% per year, whereas food production is increasing only about 2% per year.

"Continuously removing nutrients from the soil, without replacing them, is like withdrawing money from your checking account, but putting none back in...ultimately you’ll have no money. And that is what’s happening with the soils in Sub-Saharan Africa," Roy explains.

The region is one of the world’s most over-populated—even though population density is relatively low, says Dr. Henk Breman, Director of IFDC’s Africa Program. "That’s because the climates are harsh, and the soils are so poor."

Fertilizers, whether organic or mineral, are food for plants, Breman explains, and can return to the soil the life-giving nutrients that farmers harvest as food and fiber.

In the past 50 years, world use of mineral fertilizer has increased from about 30 million to 145 million tons—and grain harvests have tripled, from 680 million to about 2 billion tons, says Dr. Norman Borlaug, the 1970 Nobel Laureate who developed improved wheat varieties that feed hundreds of millions. Time magazine named Borlaug, who serves on IFDC’s Board of Directors, one of the 100 greatest scientists of the 20th century.

The manufacture of nitrogen, the key nutrient of most fertilizers, is "the most significant technical invention of this century," claims Dr. Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba, Canada, in the video. At least 2.4 billion of today’s 6 billion people are alive because of nitrogen fertilizer, Smil says.

High-yielding agriculture, made possible by fertilizers, gives the industrial nations the world’s cheapest food, says Dr. Balu Bumb, IFDC Senior Economist. A U.S. family spends less than 10% of its take-home pay on food. In contrast, half of the world earns less than US$2 per day and spends 50 to 70% of their income for food.

"The earth’s population will grow by 2 billion--equivalent to today’s combined populations of China and India--by 2025," Bumb says. "Ninety-five percent of the increase will be in developing countries. Population growth will be greatest in Sub-Saharan Africa--from today’s 640 million to 1.5 billion people."

Africa’s wildlife symbolizes, to many, our environment. Yet hunger forces farmers like Marbau and Kissem to farm the habitats of wild animals and plants.

The bison has disappeared from the North American plains, Dr. Borlaug says, "and this will happen in...game parks in Africa, unless we learn to use the land suitable for agriculture to its maximum potential."

IFDC research shows that improving soil fertility of 1 hectare of land in Africa saves 5 to 6 hectares of endangered forest or hillside, says Dr. Deborah Hellums, IFDC Soil Fertility Scientist.

Some cynics say that Africa can never feed itself. "But critics said the same about Bangladesh and Albania," IFDC President Roy responds. "And look what happened."

IFDC helped the Bangladesh government "privatize" its highly subsidized fertilizer industry, making plant nutrients cheaper and more widely available. IFDC also developed a simple machine that forms urea into "briquettes" that farmers can place into the rice root zone. That increases fertilizer use efficiency, and yields, by about 30%. Hundreds of entrepreneurs now manufacture the fertilizer briquettes across Bangladesh.

"By 1991 this country, which everyone thought would be the symbol of poverty and starvation, was feeding itself. A remarkable feat!" says Dan Waterman, IFDC Bangladesh Project Coordinator.

"Albania seemed like a hopeless case when IFDC came to help develop its agribusiness sector," says Ian Gregory, IFDC Agribusiness Program Coordinator. "After 45 years of Marxism and isolation, famine seemed possible."

IFDC helped develop a nationwide network of fertilizer distributors. As a result of improved fertilizer availability, wheat and maize yields have almost doubled, and agricultural production has increased by 7% yearly.

"If it can happen in Bangladesh and Albania," Ian Gregory, IFDC Agribusiness Program Coordinator says, "it can happen in Africa."

Order copies of the video from AGCOM International, or from Purchasing Department, IFDC, Box 2040, Muscle Shoals, AL, U.S.A. (Phone 256-381-6600, fax 256-381-7408, purchasing@ifdc.org).