Prof. Pedro Sanchez

Prof. Pedro Sanchez is the Director of Tropical Agriculture at the Columbia University Earth Institute and Professor Emeritus of Soil Science and Forestry at North Carolina State University. He is the winner of the 2002 World Food Prize and a pioneer in the field of tropical soils and agroforestry. Previously Prof. Sanchez served as director general of the International Center for Research in Agroforestry in Kenya where he spearheaded innovative programs that helped small farmers utilize inexpensive, natural resources instead of very costly fertilizers to return nutrients to depleted soil. These have dramatically increased crop yields for hundreds of thousands of small farmers. As part of an international team of scientists Prof. Sanchez helped turn the acidic, tropical soils of the Cerrado region of Brazil into 30 million hectares of productive, arable land. He has also lived in the Philippines (working at the International Rice Research Institute and the University of the Philippines at Los Baños), Peru (working with the Ministry of Agriculture), and Colombia (working at the Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical). He is author of "Properties and management of soils of the tropics" and of over 200 scientific publications. Prof. Sanchez holds numerous honors that include recipient of the International Soil Science Award by the Soil Science Society of America, the International Service in Agronomy Award by the American Society of Agronomy and an honorary doctorate from the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. One of the honors he treasures most is being named a Luo Elder in 2001 by the Luo community of Western Kenya in recognition of his work eliminating hunger from many villages in the region. A native of Cuba, Prof. Sanchez earned his Ph.D. in soil science from Cornell.