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and member of President George Bush’s 12-member Council of Advisors for Science and Technology.
The Sasakawa Foundation, an international foundation which funded the conference, is also funging agricultural projects in Benin, Togo, West Africa, Tanzania, Nigeria and Ghana, which are bringing modern fanning techniques and heartier seed stocks to their fanners.
Among the goals of the Foundation are making African farmers self-sufficient and developing foodhandling and transportation methods that bring the much-needed nutrition to the people that need it most.
The program is basically one of technology transfer, assisting smallscale crop farmers to improve their crop yields.
Dr. Borlaug, who won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for developing improved strains of wheat and rice, held sessions with a number of African agricultural ministers on how to implement basic small-scale farming techniques and post-harvest technology.
Since there is no Nobel Prize for agriculture, he was awarded the Peace Prize because of the importance of nutrition in preventing starvation and civil unrest.
“It was not just the seed,” Dr. Borlaug said, “but how to grow them, when to plant them, how to plant them, how to fertilize and when to harvest.”
Mr. Carter said that few funds have been used for the program and that the funding has been used very efficiently.
“Very little money has been spent to bring these 100,000 farmers into a role of being guides for their neighbors,” Mr. Carter said.
“They have increased their yields three and four times over — not with technology that involves electronics — Not even with the technology of gasoline or diesel engines,” he said. “There are no small Japanese tractors involved in this program.”
Mr. Carter said that the nutsand-bolts of the program include giving African farmers quality seed, a moderate amount of fertilizer and basic instruction on planting in rows, rotating crops, harvesting at the right time and storing the harvest.
“That’s it — the response from this, the return on a small investment is enormous,” the former president said.
Mr. Carter, himself a farmer in Plains, Ga., has been the only U.S. president to visit the African continent.
“The program was begun as an experimental effort and we’ve had some successes and some disappointments,” Mr. Carter said. “It’s been an exciting thing for me as a farmer to see what has been and what can be done.”
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