JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The World Food Prize is often called the Oscars of agriculture. This year, it is going to a scientist in Brazil who discovered microbes in the soil that can make crops more productive. She was a part of a research team that helped turn Brazil into a food superpower rivaling the U.S. Dan Charles has the story.
DAN CHARLES, BYLINE: Mariangela Hungria says she had a magical grandmother. They explored nature together, plants and soil.
MARIANGELA HUNGRIA: And then one day it was holiday. She gave me one of her books to read. It was about the life of the microbiologists.
CHARLES: Hungria spent that whole night reading about scientists who study microscopic life, like bacteria and fungi, and she was hooked for life. She spent decades pursuing the idea that farmers could add microbes to the soil, and it would help their crops produce bigger harvests. Her approach was unconventional. People were skeptical.
HUNGRIA: When I started my career, everybody was like, ah, you're crazy. You will never succeed in life. This will never be possible.
CHARLES: But her ideas panned out. She found microbes that were good at capturing nitrogen from the air and turning it into fertilizer for crops. Others released hormones that got plants to grow bigger roots so they could capture nutrients more efficiently.
LEO BORTOLON: She is a phenomenal scientist - a role model for many, many people, including myself.
CHARLES: Leo Bortolon is a soil scientist from Brazil who's now on the faculty at North Dakota State University. He says thanks to Hungria's work, most seeds of major crops in Brazil, like soybeans or corn, now are coated with these microbes before planting that lets farmers get by with less chemical fertilizer. Hungria spent her whole career, 40-plus years, within an organization that helped transform Brazilian agriculture - the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation, or EMBRAPA. Ryan Nehring at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C., says it has an almost mythic status.
RYAN NEHRING: EMBRAPA is this heroic institution in Brazil that conquered the wild lands of the interior, made them productive.
CHARLES: This was not the Amazon. It was a vast region of grasslands with scattered trees. The soil there was acidic. People thought it was useless for agriculture. But EMBRAPA scientists showed farmers how to add lime and other materials to the soil and make it fertile. And Mariangela Hungria says the results have been incredible. Fifty or so years ago, Brazil had to import its food.
HUNGRIA: And today look - we are the first exporter of soybean, sugar, coffee, beef, chicken.
CHARLES: But she'd also like to see some changes in Brazilian farming. It's been dominated by men and a kind of masculine attitude, she says - always claiming more land, competing.
HUNGRIA: I want to produce. I want to be the winner of production. You know, I want to go to new frontiers and so on.
CHARLES: Hungria says she'd like to see more women involved in farming and a different style of agriculture - caring for the land you already have rather than clearing more forests, focusing not just on the size of the harvest but how nutritious it is. She'll formally accept her award later this year. It's $500,000. She says she'll use that money to set up a new award for women who are doing work similar to hers.
For NPR News, I'm Dan Charles.
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