Quiet Revolutionaries: A Look at the Campaign by Agricultural Scientists to FightHunger

摘要

Cassava (also known as tapioca, yuca, or manioc) is not exactly a household wordin the capitals from which the World Bank draws the bulk of its funds. For millions of the world's poor, however, it represents the difference between hunger and sustenance. Bellotti, a former New Yorker, is a longtime, contented resident of Colombia. He is also one of the many players in an epic drama: the great defeat of the cassava mealybug in Africa. The mealybug was systematically destroying it across great tracts of the cassava belt, which stretches from Senegal in the west to Mozambique in the southeast. In some areas 80 percent of the crop was lost at a cost of billions of dollars. (Copyright (c) 1993 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank.)