Pedro Sanchez, 2002 World Food Prize laureate, spoke at the 10th Annual Norman Borlaug Lecture, in the Great Hall of the Memorial Union.

Sanchez led his audience through a discussion of his current soil restoration projects in African countries.

“I want to show you that some progress has been made,” Sanchez said. He discussed Malawi specifically and how this country has progressed from extremely poor crop yields to higher yields in as little as a few months and has continued to rise over the past six years.

“My problem is Africa,” said Sanchez, “90 percent of the hungry in Africa suffer from chronic malnutrition.” A focus question of Sanchez’s presentation was answering the question why has Africa not benefited from the Green Revolution? His answer was “because of unhealthy, nutrient-depleted soils and unclean water. Those are the two big factors.”

Sanchez wanted his audience to hear his message of hope that improvements of fighting hunger are happening in Africa, but not at a sufficient scale. He said we need to reach some sort of a tipping point.

“Real impact in my view, 15 to 20 million rural Africans are out of hunger who weren’t in 2005, but still, this is less than 10 percent of the current rural hungry. Needs to reach at least 25 percent to tip,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez gave tangible statistical data to back up his claims from the very beginning to the end of his speech sighting that 22 African Countries who are scaling-up.

Sanchez also discussed how important nutrition and meals at school are to children in Africa.

Ambassador Quinn said it was the biggest crowd yet and thanked President Geoffroy for bringing so many great lecturers over the years to the Norman Borlaug Lecture.

Sanchez ended by discussing his current project. He is working on creating a digital soil map of Africa, focusing on mapping out Africa in terms of soil properties.

“The bottom line, not in 2015, but in 2050 is education of girls, so the human fertility rate goes down.”

When Pedro Sanchez was asked what can the average student do to help, he said, “Exert political pressure on the governments and invest in Africans, in young Africans.”

“What you can do, is go there to help, you don’t have to be an agriculturalist. The baby who doesn’t cry doesn’t suckle, so please cry,” Sanchez said. “In places where there is political will, things happen.”

At the end, President Geoffroy ended by presenting Pedro Sanchez with a plaque which has engraved on it, “Civilization that is known today could not have evolved, nor can it survive, without an adequate food supply. In appreciation, Pedro Sanchez, 2011 Norman Borlaug Lecture.”

President Geoffroy was also presented with a booklet reviewing Norman Borlaug Lecturers from the past 10 years.