Fourteen visionary, young trailblazers from around the world — including an astrobiologist, a Middle East peace worker and cultural educator, an Asian elephant specialist, a wastewater engineer, a filmmaker and a science entrepreneur — have been named to the 2011 class of National Geographic Emerging Explorers. Jennifer Burney, a Scripps postdoctoral researcher and FSE fellow helping to understand how changes in cooking habits could have complementary effects on climate change and public health, was named one of them.

The award provides financial support to the research efforts of scientists who are in their early careers. Burney is a University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego and is an affiliate of Stanford University's Program on Food Security and the Environment. At Scripps, she is part of a team headed by Professor of Climate and Atmospheric Science Veerabhadran Ramanathan studying the effects of replacing homemade cookstoves in rural India with cleaner-burning alternatives in an effort called Project Surya.

“I love the puzzle of figuring out how to measure something be it with data or instrumentation and Surya by its nature is just a giant web of measurement problems. It’s a really great synergy,” said Burney, who received her doctorate in physics from Stanford University in 2007.

Among Burney’s objectives is to study the links between energy poverty and food and nutrition security and the environmental impacts of food production and consumption. In the case of Project Surya, this will mean helping Ramanathan assess what happens when emissions of soot and other black carbon are substantially reduced in a given area. Ramanathan expects that the experiment will show immediate reduction in the contribution of greenhouse agents from that area. On a large scale, the reduction of such pollution created by use of wood and dung as cooking fuel could have a major mitigative impact on climate change. It could also improve the respiratory health of local residents, who frequently must inhale the smoke from their stoves as they cook in poorly ventilated kitchens.

The Project Surya team is hoping to launch a phase later this year in which cookers are replaced with cleaner stoves in a 10-square-kilometer (four-square-mile) area in India. They will then measure emissions of black carbon via satellite and at ground level with help from local residents.

Burney will separately study the agricultural effects associated with temperature and precipitation changes that could be triggered by the cookstove switch.

“I am really delighted, but not surprised, that Jen got this well deserved honor,” said Ramanathan. “She brings lots of talent and experience to the Surya research. She is an asset.”

Burney said that the award will also support another project she is conducting in West Africa in which she is assessing the feasibility of using solar power to improve irrigation capabilities there.

The Emerging Explorers each receive a $10,000 award to assist with research and to aid further exploration. Burney and the other new Emerging Explorers are introduced in the June 2011 issue of National Geographic magazine, and comprehensive profiles can be found at http://www.nationalgeographic.com/emerging.

"Most of the people in the world are poor, so if we knew the economics of being poor, we would know much of the economics that really matters. Most of the world's poor people earn their living from agriculture, so if we knew the economics of agriculture, we would know much of the economics of being poor." - Theodore W. Schultz, accepting the Nobel Prize in Economics, December 8, 1979           

More than thirty years ago, Theodore W. Schultz won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on economic development and agriculture in developing countries. Last week, Cornell University Professor Christopher Barrett told Stanford students, faculty, and community members that Schultz's ideas suggest a powerful approach to breaking persistent cycles of poverty in modern rural Africa.

Barrett, a Professor of Applied Economics and Management and an expert in poverty and international development, visited the Stanford campus for a two-hour symposium entitled "Assisting the Escape from Persistent Ultra-Poverty in Rural Africa." He described the economics of poverty and agriculture in rural Africa as a series of downward spirals in environmental and human health.

The struggle to survive on insufficient resources, he explained, leads to disease and degradation that result in still deeper poverty. Escaping this cycle requires an influx of assets - a "lump of starting capital" in both private and public goods - that Barrett said the international community can provide.

"It takes money to make money," Barrett said. "Asset holdings, and their productivity through technology and markets, matter enormously."

When African farmers and pastoralists slip below a certain threshold of asset poverty, Barrett explained, they face negative feedbacks that set off a steep decline.

For example, a farmer who cultivates the same tiny plot of land year after year depletes soil nutrients to the point where even heavy fertilizer applications cannot revive the crop. Similarly, a pastoral family that begins with a small herd may become sedentary if they are unable to provide for the elderly and infirm while keeping their animals on the move. Stuck in one place, the herd exhausts local resources, and animals and humans alike suffer the health consequences of insufficient food and water.

A farmer who begins with plenty of land can sustain higher yields and invest surplus profits in education, health care, better equipment and still more land. But for the small farmer, incentives to invest in a better future are low, because the consequences of losing even a little income - an accelerated decline toward deeper poverty - are so severe.

Subsistence activity takes precedence, and when bad weather or disease strikes, the results are devastating. Limited access to credit, technology, and markets; weak government; and a harsh physical landscape make it still more difficult for rural Africans to invest in productive assets and recover from chance shocks.

These negative feedbacks and perverse incentives, Barrett said, make African poverty uniquely persistent.

While poor families in the developed world usually experience brief deprivation as a result of job loss or another isolated event, ultra-poor families in rural Africa have exhausted their land, livestock, and other productive assets. Without the means to restore natural and human capital, they may face a lifetime of poverty.

"In the US, poverty, while distressingly widespread, is a short-term phenomenon," Barrett noted. ""It is qualitatively and ethically different to talk about people who have very little hope of leaving poverty."

But Barrett said that the next generation of rural Africans has reason to be hopeful. While there is no one-size-fits-all approach, targeted investment could improve the outlook for many poor African nations. Barrett cited a generation of successful poverty relief efforts in Asia, where ultra-poverty rates in some countries have fallen from the high teens to less than five percent.

"East and Southeast Asia were at least as grim a generation ago as Africa is today," Barrett emphasized. "We know from the historical record that the world can move a lot of people out of poverty very quickly."

Citing Schultz's Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Barrett suggested that the international community focus first on reversing the cycles of decline that have pushed so many African farmers into meager subsistence agriculture.

Farm output, he said, universally impacts the rural poor. When output increases, poor farmers gain directly by selling their surplus. The extra supply also keeps local food prices low, benefiting the vast majority of rural Africans who consume more food than they produce.

Barrett described several possible "entry points" to stimulate agricultural productivity, including direct land and livestock grants, organized provision of rural education and health care, and renewed commitment to African crop research.

Private entrepreneurs, he said, are particularly well situated to invest in the technology and infrastructure needed to open rural markets, support soil and water conservation, and improve communication between buyers and sellers.

Barrett said that relief efforts should ultimately turn their attention to moving rural Africans out of agriculture. High rural population densities have compressed average farm sizes to a fraction of a hectare, he explained, making farming an unsustainable enterprise. More and more rural Africans are suffering the consequences of trying to do too much with too little.

"They find farming hard work," Barrett said, "and they'd like their kids to be able to find something else to do."

Barrett already sees a brighter future for those farmers and their children. "With governments and private investors already increasing their commitments to agriculture and rural development in Africa," he said, "I firmly believe we are in the early stages of being on the way."

This talk was the third in FSE's Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series.

Stanford experts celebrated Earth Day with an interactive and provocative afternoon of panels and discussions focused on humanity's needs for and use of food, energy, water, and environment. Drawing from their own research, the speakers illustrated and evaluated some of the ways in which decisions in one resource area can lead to trade-offs or co-benefits in others.

Stanford faculty presentations:

• The Global Food Challenge
  Roz Naylor, Program on Food Security and the Environment
  Woods Institute for the Environment
• The Food-Energy Nexus
  Chris Field, Department of Global Ecology
  Carnegie Institution
• The Food-Climate Nexus
  David Lobell, Program on Food Security and the Environment
  Woods Institute for the Environment
• The Food-Water Nexus
  Buzz Thompson, Woods Institute for the Environment
• The Food-Security Nexus
  Mariano-Florentino Cueller, Center for International Security and Cooperation
  Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies

Breakout sessions:

• Pumping it up: investigating and controlling groundwater depletion
  Rebecca Nelson, Law School; Vanessa Mitchell and Jessica Reeves, Geophysics
• What are local foods and what are they good for?
  Therese Costello, Earth Systems Program
• Whose sustainability? The real inputs and impacts of grass-fed and grain-fed beef
  Chris Fedor and Kate Hyder, Earth Systems Program
• How much energy does it take to make your meal? Understanding the energy inputs into the food system at different scales
  Jennifer Burney, Program on Food Security and the Environment
• Tuna or tilapia? Food security and environmental implications of aquaculture
  Andy Gerhart and Dane Klinger, Earth Systems Program
• The Full Monty: Revealing the social and environmental costs and benefits of agriculture
  Heather Tallis, Natural Capital Project

Sugarcane - a principal crop for biofuel - reduces the local air temperature compared to pasturelands or fields growing soybeans or maize, according to a new study from researchers at Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution for Science. But sugarcane's effect on temperature is a "double-edged machete," as it increases ambient temperatures compared with natural vegetation.

These small local changes should be taken into consideration in studies of global climate change, the researchers said.

The researchers looked at changes in vegetation in the Brazilian Cerrado - a vast tropical savanna lying south of the Amazon basin - large areas of which have been converted from natural vegetation to agriculture in recent decades.

Increasingly, these existing agricultural areas are now being converted to sugarcane for use in biofuel production. Brazil is now second only to the United States in ethanol production, much of which is used domestically.

What the effect on global climate would be if sugarcane farming were to expand significantly is not yet clear, said David Lobell, an assistant professor in environmental Earth system science at Stanford and center fellow at the Program on Food Security and the Environment.

"The temperature changes are happening locally, where the land-use change is happening," Lobell said. "It does not seem to spill over into other countries, for example, at least as far as we can tell right now."

But Lobell said sugarcane growing in the Cerrado is definitely expanding and given that the region encompasses approximately 1.9 million square kilometers (733,000 square miles) - an area larger than Alaska - the potential exists for a globally significant effect.

Using maps and data from hundreds of satellite images, the researchers calculated the temperature, the amount of water given off and how much light was reflected rather than absorbed for each of the different types of vegetation. They found that compared to land cultivated with other annual crops, sugarcane reduced the local air temperature by an average of 0.93 degrees Celsius (1.67 F).

But compared to the natural vegetation of the Cerrado - mainly grass and shrubs - the sugarcane fields warmed the ambient air by 1.55 C (2.79 F).

Lobell said the bulk of the temperature difference is due to evapotranspiration - the moisture released to the air through the leaves of the plants and the soil. Most of the land put into sugarcane had previously been converted from natural vegetation to pastureland, said Scott Loarie, a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie. "If someone has a farm that once was natural vegetation, that transition to pasture and annual crops caused local warming," he said. "So now as the farm is going to sugarcane, by comparison it is cooling temperatures locally."

Their research, Direct Impacts on Local Climate of Sugarcane Expansion in Brazil, is described in the current issue of Nature Climate Change.

This local cooling does not necessarily mean that the global climate is cooling as a result. It depends in part on what happens with the agriculture that was displaced by the sugarcane, Loarie said. For example, if cattle used to graze on a tract of land and some Amazon forest is cut down to provide new pasture for them, net carbon emissions will actually increase.

"You might not make any difference as far as cooling the world globally at all; in fact, you might make the world marginally warmer," he said.

"The global implications of these local effects were not a part of this study, and any discussion of mitigating global climate should consider the potential for these land use cascades."

One of the important aspects of the study, Lobell said, is that it demonstrates how satellite data can be used in real time to understand the effects of environmental changes. Most research studying the impact of biofuel use on climate has been done with computer modeling.

"I think the coolest thing about this study is you actually can see these temperature effects happening already," Lobell said. "In terms of the more general point about bio energy, I think it is another good example of why looking only at greenhouse gases is not the full picture."

Another takeaway from the study, Loarie said, is that the temperature findings support the existing rule of thumb that biofuel crops are best located on land that is already used for agriculture. That general guideline stems from the fact that there is less carbon released to the atmosphere by converting land where the existing vegetation contains low amounts of carbon, such as pasture or crops, than by cutting down the dense, carbon-rich forests in the Amazon.

Loarie said that while the study clearly showed that planting sugarcane moves the temperature closer to what it would have been if the natural vegetation had not been removed from the land, that doesn't mean the land is any closer to its natural state in other respects.

"Converting pasture to sugarcane is definitely not ecological restoration," said Chris Field, a professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science, who was involved in the research.

"Still, the direct effect on climate is potentially important enough to play a role in future decisions about land use and land management in large parts of the tropics," he said.

The study was funded by the Stanford University Global Climate and Energy Project.

Greg Asner, a professor, by courtesy, of environmental Earth system science, is a coauthor of the paper. Lobell is also a center fellow at both the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Woods Institute for the Environment. Field is also a senior fellow at the Precourt Institute for Energy and at the Woods Institute, and director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution.

On the eve of the Lunar New Year, Beijing is bright and bustling. Keeping a promise made to a friend 2000 km away, a reporter walks along Zhongguancun Boulevard in search of a medicine called the "baota lozenge." However, more than twenty-some pharmacies of all sizes have all given the same answer: this once familiar anthelmintic drug has been off the counters of pharmacies for over 10 years!

In Sichuan and Guizhou, some 2000 km away, the final report from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Rural Policy Research Center and the Rural Education Action Project (REAP) on the current infection status of intestinal worms in children is fresh off the press. In the more than twenty years since the baota lozenge came off the market, prevention efforts against soil-borne worm infections in rural children have weakened and these parasitic infections traditionally affecting rural children have re-emerged!

According to results from a survey of 6 randomly selected nationally designated poor counties and 95 villages, in which 817 three to five year-old preschool-aged children and 890 eight to ten-year old school-aged children in Sichuan and Guizhou were screened for intestinal worms, REAP found that infection rates for intestinal worms (Ascaris, hookworm and whipworm) reached 22%: 21% for preschool-aged children and 23% for school-aged children.

In a country like China that has been experiencing an economic boom for the past 30 years, why do poor rural children today still have such a high infection rate of intestinal worms?

Delisting the baota lozenge and its effects on children's health

Among 817 three to five year-old preschool-aged children and 890 eight to ten-year old school-aged children randomly selected from 6 poor counties, the overall intestinal worm infection rate was high at 22%, mainly with Ascaris. Of the infected children, ~80% had roundworms, and 15% had multiple infections. This result overturns the presumption that intestinal worms infection decreases when standard of living increases.

A WHO report in 1999 explained that in tropical and subtropical regions, the loss from soil-borne parasitic diseases and schistosomiasis accounts for over 40% of the total disease burden. Those affected are mainly children; the diseases increase the risk of malnutrition, anemia, stunting, impaired cognition, and other diseases.   

Actually, even before this report was published, China had already prioritized prevention of soil-borne parasitic diseases and schistosomiasis in public health measures. In the 50 years from the founding of new China to the early 1990s, the Chinese government had been devoted to increasing awareness of parasitic worm infections and systematic use of anti-parasite drugs as part of its prevention efforts to drastically reduce intestinal worm infection rates in children. However, in the last 20 years, not only have intestinal worms not been considered a priority in national infectious disease control, but the baota lozenge used consecutively for 10 years has also retreated from the market.

With the baota lozenge off the market and intestinal worm prevention at a low, what is the current health status of the vast number of rural children?

With this question in mind, CCAP and REAP's team, with the help of the Chinese CDC's Parasitic Diseases Control and Prevention Institute, conducted a field work investigation from April 2010 to June 2010 in Sichuan and Guizhou.

To ensure representativeness and the scientific nature of the survey, 6 nationally designated poor counties were randomly selected across the two provinces. After sampling areas were confirmed, the townships in each county were divided into 42 groups according to per capita net income and 12 townships were randomly selected from each group. Four sample townships were selected from each sample county. In every sample township, 2 sample schools were randomly selected; in every sample school, 2 sample villages served by the school were randomly selected; in each sample village, 11 eight to ten-year olds were selected for parasitic worm infection screening. At the same time, in every village, using child vaccination records (provided by township health center), the research team acquired the name list of all three to five-year old children in the two sample villages within that township. Eleven three to five-year old preschool-aged children were randomly selected from each sample village for screening for intestinal worms.

In this way, with collaborations with international parasitic worm expert consultants and recommendations from the Chinese CDC Parasitic Disease Control and Prevention Institute, 46 schools, 95 villages served by the schools, and a total of 1707 children were randomly selected to form the sample. Of these, 817 were three to five years old and considered preschool-aged and 890 were eight to ten years old and considered school-aged.

The investigation and screening of children for parasitic worms consisted of three main parts: anthropomorphic measures, basic socioeconomic information and children's fecal samples. A team of nurses from Xi'an Jiaotong University was responsible for measuring children's height and weight; REAP team members collected information on sample children's age, gender, parental education levels, hygiene and family characteristics, as well as whether children had received anthelmintics in the past year and a half. Chinese CDC Parasitic Disease Control and Prevention Institute analyzed fecal samples.    

Over the course of a few months of data analysis, results indicate: sample areas have high infection rates of intestinal worms, but discrepancies exist across different age groups, areas and types of parasitic worm infection. Twenty-one percent of preschool-aged and 23% of school-aged children in sample areas were infected with Ascaris, hookworm or whipworm or a combination thereof. Infection rates meet WHO's criteria for mass treatment. In one province, 34% of preschool-aged and 40% of school-aged children have one or more of the three types of worms. In the other province, although infection rates are lower among preschool and school-aged children, they are still 10% and 7%, respectively. Among the types of worm infection, Ascaris is most severe, with infection rates reaching 17%, followed by whipworm (7%), pinworm (5%), and hookworm (4%).

At the same time, regional differences are quite distinct. In one of the provinces, 7 villages out of 48 sample villages and 2 schools out of the 23 sample schools had prevalence rates above 20%. About half of the sample villages and schools suggest evidence of parasitic worm infection. In the other province, one quarter of the sample villages and one third of the sample schools had infection rates above 50%. Evidently, intestinal worms prevention is an important public health concern that needs to be emphasized by local disease control centers.

Besides high infection rates of parasitic worms, the intensity of infection should not be ignored. Among preschool-aged children in the two sample areas, each gram of fecal matter contains 23,568 and 17,064 roundworm eggs, respectively. According to WHO standards, this level of roundworm infection is considered a "moderate" infection level. Hookworm and whipworm infection intensities are lower; only hookworm infection among school-aged children in Sichuan reached "moderate intensity," while other infection levels could be considered "low intensity".

 What causes parasitic worm infection in these children?

The investigation shows that infection in preschool-aged children correlates with maternal education and family health conditions, while infection in school-aged children correlates with school health education and hygiene conditions. Of particular importance is that even though eliminating worms costs only 4 RMB per person per year, prevention efforts have not been included in local medical services in less accessible rural areas with high infection rates.

In the third grade class of Longshan elementary school in Machang township, Pingba county, Anshun city, Guizhou province, one question continues to haunt head teacher Li: "Why does our class have students calling in sick and missing school every day?"

On the surface, Teacher Li's third grade class is no different from schools in other rural areas in China. The students are typical rural schoolchildren filled with curiosity, who have bright eyes, dirty hands, and colorful backpacks.

However, if you pay close attention, you will notice they are very different from same-aged children in other areas. These students are mostly on the small side, and look one to two years younger than their actual age. At recess, there is none of the typical pent-up energy kids usually have after sitting in a classroom all morning. No excited children chasing one another, no shouts from the hubbub of play, no lively rhythm of skipping rope. It is as if a blanket of weariness has descended on these children.  

The culprit is no other than intestinal worms. According to the introduction provided by researchers Drs. Xiaobing Wang and Chengfang Liu, Longshan elementary school has one of the highest infection rates of all sampled schools, reaching 70%. One of the two sample villages covered by Longshan elementary schools had parasitic worm infection rates as high as 80%.

What effect does parasitic worm infection have on children's growth and development? REAP's results indicate that worms lead to anemia in 22.7% of the rural school-aged children, and delayed physical development in 30%, which is a 400% higher risk than non-infected children. Compared with non-infected children, affected children have below-average weights, shorter stature, weaker body constitution, and general underdevelopment, just to name a few characteristics.

The project research team, Chinese CDC Parasitic Disease Control and Prevention Institute's Guofei Wang and Xibei University's Professor Yaojiang Shi believe that worms not only cause discomfort and nausea, but also lead to significant learning (memory) and cognitive impairments.

Renfu Luo, an assistant researcher at CCAP, believes that the underlying reason is that high infection rates have long been neglected, and so have caused low school attendance rates and limited attention spans, which ultimately lead to infected children falling behind their healthy counterparts.

In fact, according to the WHO's parasitic worms prevention guidelines, for schools like Longshan elementary school that are rural and inaccessible, two mass administrations of albendazole or mebendazole (both available on the market) are needed per year. However, the reality is, even though the medicine costs only 4 RMB per person per year for kids from Longshan elementary school and other nearby rural villages, the public health infrastructure required to combat the disease has not been incorporated into the scope of medical services.

If the Longshan elementary school sample is an example of the typical conditions in western villages, what are the implications on a larger scale? CCAP researcher Linxiu Zhang believes that in the long run, if parasitic worm infections in children continue to be neglected in national infectious disease control, the future efficiency and productivity of the rural labor force will be affected. From an education perspective, and in light of an increasingly competitive skill-based socioeconomic environment, intestinal worms may very well be the primary driver for perpetuating the vicious intergenerational cycle of poverty.

From the 6 sample counties investigated over the course of 3 months, the researchers were able to see with their own eyes the health situation of Longshan elementary school and other sample schools. The researchers could not resist asking, how did these kids become infected with intestinal worms? Living in more or less the same environment, why do some kids become infected while others escape that fate?

After repeated comparison and analysis of the data, researchers found that these poor rural village children's infection rates are correlated with mother's education level, children's unsanitary hygiene habits (such as not washing hands before meals and after bathroom use), and family health conditions (such as access to potable, clean water, toilet sanitation, and livestock/poultry breeding habits). At the same time, children's habit of wearing split pants for convenient urination/defecation also exacerbates the risk for worm infection. Because mothers are usually responsible for their children's eating and health habits at home, mothers with lower education levels often lack knowledge about health and nutrition improvement and intestinal worm disease severity. Thus, the higher the mother's education level, the lower the child's chance of infection. Interestingly though, father's education level has no visible effect on the child's risk of infection.

For school-aged children, the main reason for intestinal worm infection is that poor rural village schools lack safe drinking water services and facilities. In these sample schools, researchers found that the schools' water quality is a far cry from the national standards for safe, potable water. However, because these schools cannot provide boiled water, many students have no choice but to drink unprocessed, unboiled water.

Drinking unboiled water is a main cause for infection in children. According to calculations made by the research team, consuming unboiled water increases infection by 11%, while washing hands before meals can decrease infection by about 4.6%.

Poor school sanitation conditions are also a main driver for infection. Research findings indicate that two-thirds of the sampled schools did not have sinks for washing hands; even though a few schools have constructed sinks, because there is no running water or soap, they are really just for display. Also, none of the sampled school treated their bathroom waste using appropriate and safe chemical methods, which not only affects sanitation in and around the school, but also facilitates parasitic worm cross-infection.

Insufficient knowledge or poor public health measures?

Prevention of intestinal worm infection for poor, rural village children is unstructured, unsystematic, and combined with school sanitation and health education deficiencies, has triggered high infection rates in remote rural areas. However, the primary reason for this phenomenon is the lack of basic public health measures in rural settings.

The analysis of the data begs the following question: Why, in the midst of rapid economic progress, are there still elevated levels of infection among children in certain regions? We know from China's past successes in infectious disease control that basic public health services are all that is needed to effectively prevent parasitic worm infection. And cheap, effective, safe, and reliable anthelmintics are easily acquirable. Yet high levels of infection persist. Why?

As early as 1960, many international experts in global development praised China for its ability, despite its developing status and low average income, to effectively provide public health services for rural citizens and children. Turning back to that page in long forgotten history, China was actually able to prevent parasitic worm disease at impressive proportions in a short span of 50 years. The success can be attributed to strong adherence to prevention and the hard work of medical and public health personnel.

Data indicate that in the 1970s, the parasitic worm infection rate among China's children reached about 80%. The 1990 seminal nation-wide human parasites survey found that overall parasitic prevalence remained high at 63%, with the intestinal worm infection rate at 59%. Even though China's population infected with Ascaris, whipworm and hookworm at that time reached 140 million people, due to administration of anthelmintics in rural villages combined with health education and waste management as part of a concerted prevention effort, the parasitic infection rate ultimately plummeted at the beginning of this century. Soil-borne worm infection rates decreased to about 20%. 

This was an accomplishment during a time of massive prevention and treatment by the infectious disease control unit. This period marked a golden era for public health measures in rural villages. Almost everyone over 35 years of age born in rural areas can still vividly remember the many "barefoot" and village doctors who performed regular check-ups for various villages, treated common diseases for free, and educated people about basic disease prevention and health practices. One of the most commonly seen services was providing free "baota" lozenges or albendazole to children, in the form of a pink or blue, mildly sweet anthelmintic pill.

However, this "free lunch" period did not last long. After conducting field work studies on the sample villages, researchers discovered that entering into the 1980s, with decreasing investment in rural public health and medical services, the rural health system sustained by "barefoot" doctors crumbled, and villagers have since rarely enjoyed basic public health protection. With severe financial shortages and lack of coordination, education and public health collaboration efforts also descended into stagnation. School-aged children's health surveillance and vaccination measures reached a nearly historic low. In recent years, the Chinese government has begun to redirect attention to rural public health. However, the prolonged 20-year disappearance of basic rural public health services from the national radar has initiated the revival of many once eliminated diseases in these areas. Some villages actually exist in zones of concentrated outbreaks.

With an impressive record of success just twenty years ago, why is the prevention of parasitic worms in children still so difficult in an economically blossoming and increasingly health conscious society? Is it due to insufficient monetary funding, gaps in knowledge, or some other reason?

Researchers believe that even with the disappearance of the high quality and inexpensive "baota" lozenge, other drug treatments for parasitic worm infections in children exist today, requiring just two administrations per year and a low cost of less than 4 RMB. However, the critical problem is that health and education administration in various areas currently lack substantive, effective coordination in their anthelmintic efforts. Small investments that maximize benefit to many people's livelihoods are slow to be made.

According to field interviews, when the "baota" lozenge retreated from center stage, local health and education departments debated about who should take responsibility for children's health, and teachers and principals also shunned the problem. In discussions with some teachers from sampled schools, researchers found that teachers scratched their heads over poor parental care in addressing the issue. Despite all schools establishing relevant health education curricula, due to limited manpower and financial resources, most schools do not have full-time health education teachers and do not distribute unified teaching materials to students, so the curriculum can hardly be implemented.

Actually though, cross-department cooperation has occurred in the past. At the end of the last century, the Ministries of Health and Education used to collaborate on formulating and implementing effective anthelmintic interventions for children through stratified school-based efforts that provided anthelmintics for free to children in severe infection areas. At that time, treatment of parasitic worms in children was highly successful.

However, the reality is that in the sampled areas, a relatively large portion of medical institutions lack funding support and the necessary facilities. Thus, they have no capacity to freely provide parasitic worm prevention services to children, resulting in 55% of sampled rural children being infected with intestinal worms. These children have never been administered any anthelmintics, and even for those who have been treated, they did not undergo any examination of the distribution of intestinal worm infection beforehand. Parents often solely look for changes to their children's appetite or compare their children's weight with that of other same-aged peers. They rarely seek medical help or follow a doctor's advice, and many freely allow their kids to take the medications on their own. Due to limited knowledge about parasitic worm infections and prevention, parents never followed-up to make sure the medication worked and are unclear about reinfection risks. The vast majority of parents wrongly assume that using anthelmintics just once will prevent infection in the long run.

By investigating children who have used anthelmintics in the past 18 months (47% of the sample), researchers found that even after treatment, intestinal worms reinfection rates in children remained at a high 20%. In one sampled province, intestinal worms reinfection rates in children were at a startling 33% after treatment. These results indicate that across sampled areas, one-third of preventive medication efforts produced no effect. What is needed is integration into rural public health services system with long-term follow-up, surveillance, and medical intervention when appropriate.

An indisputable reality is that the worm burden reduction is different from other types of infectious disease control because specialized equipment and knowledge are needed for detection of intestinal worm infection in children, and the disease often strikes poor, remote rural areas. Thus, even though rural public health services have received more attention today, it remains difficult to attract the focus of relevant departments.

Recommendations from experts in multiple fields: Increase the level of parasitic worm prevention and improve health facilities in poor rural schools

The situation of intestinal worm infection is one parameter by which to measure the economic development and social civilization level of a country. However, some poor areas in China today still have high rates of infection, which is inconsistent with the rapid socioeconomic development in the country, sounding a loud warning bell for the Ministries of Health and Education. 

International research indicates that for every 1 RMB spent on health education, 6 RMB is saved in medical treatment fees. For the reemergence of intestinal worms affecting children in some rural areas, are there other better solutions?

Renfu Luo, an assistant researcher at CCAP, suggests that the pressing matter at the moment is to mobilize parasitic worms prevention efforts in poor rural areas, renew inclusion of such efforts in the government's infectious disease control focus, develop and implement a long-term health education curriculum in schools that covers parasitic worm prevention, as well as launch health promotion campaigns in rural communities. With this foundation, the government needs to organize relevant experts to go deep into the vast number of poverty-stricken villages. Talks, newspapers, bulletins, and slogans, among other methods that address intestinal worms prevention; disseminating information on individual and public health; motivating schools, children, and families; urging poor rural communities to change unsanitary habits and thereby eliminate or reduce external factors affecting health are among the basic interventions that can lower the infection rates in impoverished children.

Yaojiang Shi, Director of the Xibei (Northwest) Research Center for Economic and Social Development and Professor of Xibei University, believes that the education administrative departments must intensify improvements to public health and drinking water facilities in poor rural schools while simultaneously nurturing and teaching children about good health habits. On the supply side, schools should provide students with safe drinking water and improve toilets and hand-washing areas; these improvements in external conditions can facilitate decreases in parasitic worm infection rates.

CCAP deputy director Linxiu Zhang recommends that the central government should augment investment efforts to manage environmental sanitation in poor rural villages, improve water source environmental protection and water quality, promote context-specific domestic pollution control, strengthen livestock pollution measures, reduce livestock waste, recycle, and process waste through non-hazardous treatment. At the same time, the government should consider including parasitic worm prevention services in the Rural Cooperative Medical System in poverty-stricken areas, allowing children to truly enjoy the benefits of national public health services for intestinal worms detection and treatment, experience effective decreases in infection rates, and develop healthily to reach their potential. (Article correspondent: Jin Ke)

Relevant background information

The past and present of the "baota" lozenge

"Baota" lozenge targets a common type of parasitic worm, the intestinal roundworm. At the beginning of the liberation period, roundworm infection was prevalent throughout China's cities and countryside.

As part of the former Soviet Union's aid projects in China, China imported wormseed seeds to test plant from the Soviet Union. The 20 g of seeds (can imagine the value of the seeds) imported were divided into 4 portions and under the protection of public security personnel, were transported to 4 state-owned farms in cities given the task of test planting: Hohhot, Datong, Xian and Weifang. Only one trial in Weifang announced success. In order to keep the information secret, Weifang publicized the successful test plant as "Pyrethrum No. 1" to the outside.

This roundworm-specific anthelmintic is derived from wormseed in the Chenopodiaceae family of herbs. It was initially administered in pure tablet form, but in order to expedite administration to children, a certain proportion of sugar was added, and the medicine was transformed into a light yellow and pink cone-shaped pill that resembled a pagoda ("baota"). People thus named this medication the "baota" lozenge.

The anthelmintic encountered many hardships including the Great Leap Forward, which through mistaken industrial techniques led to 3500 kg of raw materials going to waste. Then, the rebels from the "Ten Years of Turmoil" took the promising manufacturing of wormseed medication and left it in a terrible mess. In 1979, the Ministry of Health and State Food and Drug Administration promoted universal administration of "baota" lozenge. But in September 1982, all dosage forms and raw materials were eliminated. By the early 1990s, "baota" lozenge had disappeared from China.

The dangers of a few important types of intestinal worms

Intestinal worms mainly infect children, and due to competition with the host for nutrients, often lead to malnutrition and anemia in infected children, compromised physical and cognitive development, and even death from complications.

Ascaris larvae migration can lead to larvae-induced pneumonia and allergic reactions, while adult roundworms residing in the small intestine can destroy gastrointestinal function, generating abdominal pain, loss of appetite, nausea, diarrhea or constipation and even severe complications such as intestinal obstruction, biliary duct ascariasis, and appendicitis.

Hookworm resides in the duodenum and small intestine, sucking up nutrients and blood in children, leading to anemia, poor appetite, nausea and vomiting, pale nails and facial complexion, dizziness, feebleness, shortness of breath, palpitation etc. Chronic infection can affect children's growth and development and severe infection can cause anemia-induced congestive heart failure.  

Whipworm resides in children's cecum and appendix and consumes tissue fluid and blood for sustenance. Infected individuals can experience appetite loss, nausea, vomiting, bloody stool and other symptoms.

Pinworm's unique feature is that it stimulates itchy sensations in the anus and genitals at night, affecting sleep with associated symptoms of poor appetite, emaciation, irritability, night terror etc and can induce ectopic complications such as appendicitis.  

February 10th marked the launch of the Program on Food Security and the Environment's Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium Series. Setting the stage for the two-year series were Jeff Raikes, CEO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Greg Page, CEO and Chairman of Cargill Inc. As CEOs from the largest foundation and the largest agricultural firm in the world they provided important perspectives on global food security in these particularly volatile times. Full video and clips of the event are now available - Improving Food Security in the 21st Century: What are the Roles for Firms and Foundations.

Jeff Raikes: A Perspective from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Catalytic philanthropy

The Gates Foundation, through its Agricultural Development Initiative, has been a leader in addressing global food security issues. The Foundation allocates 25% of its resources to global development and to addressing the needs of the 1 billion people who live in extreme poverty ($1/day). 70-75% of those people live in rural areas and are dependent on subsistence agriculture for their livelihoods.

The Gates Foundation is driven by the principle: how can it invest its resources in ways that can leverage performance and address market failures? Its approach embodies a novel concept driven by both private sector motives and public responsibilities. Raikes describes this as catalytic philanthropy.

"The Foundation identifies where its investments can create an innovation, a new intervention that can really raise the quality of lives for people," said Raikes. "If successful, it can be scaled up and sustained by the private sector if we can show that there is a profit opportunity or the public sector if we can show that this is a better way to improve the overall quality of society through investment in public dollars."

Image Photo credit: Michael Prince

In the realm of agriculture, allocating resources across the agricultural value chain has proven to be the most effective approach. As an example of this strategy, Raikes talked about a farmer-owned, Gates-supported dairy chilling plant in Kenya. The cooling facility provided the storage necessary to provide a predictable price at which to sell farmers' milk. This price knowledge and market access gave farmers the confidence to invest in better technology and better dairy cattle. The plant also provided artificial insemination services and extension services to teach farmers how to get greater amounts of milk from the cattle.

"I love the concept. I also love the numbers," said Raikes. "In just two or three years there were now 3,000 farmers in a 25 kilometer radius that were able to access this dairy chilling plant and able to sell their milk."

In addition to improving incomes, Raikes remarked that very consistently what he hears is when farmers are able to improve their incomes the first thing they do with the money is invest in the education of their children.

Upcoming challenges to food security

During the next 40 years or so, global food production must double to accommodate a growing and richer population. Climate change and water scarcity contribute to this challenge. The places that will suffer the most severe weather are also the places where the poorest farmers live. 95% of sub-Saharan agriculture is rain fed with very little irrigation.

"If we are going to be able to feed the world we are going to have to figure out how to achieve more crop per drop," cautioned Raikes. "This includes trying to breed crop varieties that will better withstand water shortages. Early results show that you can get as much as a 20% increase in yield or more under stressed conditions when you have varieties that are bred for that need."

These challenges are compounded by the current economic crisis that is putting pressure on budgets in both donor and developing countries. In 2009, the G20 committed 22 billion dollars to agricultural development in recognition of the importance of agricultural development to food security. However, of the 22 billion promised, 224 million dollars went to five countries in the first round of grants in June. By November, when 21 additional countries submitted their proposals, just 97 million dollars were available to be dispersed and 17 countries were turned away empty handed.

High- and low-tech solutions

In an effort to alleviate some of this deficit, the Gates Foundation has committed 300 million dollars in six grants that span the value chain. These include investments in science and technology, farm management practices, farmer productivity, and market access as well as the data and policy environment to support the Foundation's work. The grants are intended to support about 5 ½ million farm families in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

"We believe innovative solutions can come from both high-tech and low-tech," said Raikes. "On the high-tech end, submergent genes are allowing rice crops to survive periods of flooding up to 15 days. In areas of rice farming prone to flooding, this can save entire crops traditionally wiped out by such weather disasters."

Image Photo credit IRRI/Ariel Javellana

The sub1gene seeds are now being used by 400,000 farmers and are on track to be used by 20 million rice farmers by 2017. On the low-tech end, the Gates Foundation is providing $2 triple layer bags to farmers to reduce crop loss from pests; an affordable solution that has increased average income per farmer by $150/year.

"We primarily support conventional breeding, but we also support biotechnology breeding. In some cases we think that breeders in Africa and South Asia will want to take advantage of the modern tools we use here in our country to provide better choices for their farmers," explained Raikes.

Reasons for optimism

After years of diminished support, US Agricultural Development assistance to sub-Saharan Africa has gone from about 650 million in 2005 to about 1.5 billion in 2009. In developing countries, the Comprehensive Agricultural Development Program (CADP) in Africa has challenged countries to dedicate 10% of their national budgets to agriculture with the goal of improving annual agricultural growth by 6%. 20 countries have signed on to the CADP compacts, and 10 countries are exceeding the 6% growth target. Finally, since 1990, 1.3 billion people worldwide have lifted themselves out of poverty primarily through improvements in agricultural productivity.

Raikes pointed to Ghana as a success story. Since 1990, casaba production, an important staple food for poor smallholder farmers, has increased fivefold. Tomato production increased six fold. The cocoa sector has been revived and hunger has been cut by 75%.

"The key to success in Ghana was a combination of getting the right developing country policy with the right macroeconomic reform, the right institutional reform, smart public investment, and an overall good policy environment," said Raikes.

Supporting good policy is an important part of the Foundation's food security strategy, and was a strong motivation behind its funding of FSE's Global Food Policy and Food Security Symposium series.

"We see this symposium series as an opportunity to gather policy leaders who will bring new ideas of what will be effective policy approaches and effective economic environments in the countries we care a lot about, in particular sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia," said Raikes.

Raikes concluded his remarks by reminding everyone that the key to improving food security globally is making sure women, who make up at least 70% of the farm labor population, are included in the equation.

Greg Page: Balancing the race to caloric sufficiency with rural sociology

As the largest global agricultural firm, Cargill has an influential role to play in the world of food and agriculture. Cargill is a major supplier of food and crops and a provider of farmer services, inputs, and market access.

Image Photo credit: Olaf Hammelburg

Together with the Gates Foundation, Cargill has reached out and trained 200,000 cocoa farmers in the Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Cameroon. One tribe and one small village at a time the company has helped improve food safety, quality maintenance, and storage; benefiting the farmers, Cargill, and customers further down the supply chain. Cargill has also assisted, through financing and product purchasing, 265,000 farmers in Benin, Burkina Faso, the Ivory Coast, Malawi, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Can the world feed itself?

A billion people lack sufficient caloric intake on a daily basis. In sub-Saharan Africa, 38% of all children are chronically malnourished, largely the result of inadequate agricultural productivity. While nine of the ten countries that have the highest prevalence of malnourishment are in sub-Saharan Africa, the two countries with the largest absolute number of malnourished people are India and China.

"This points to the difficulty of this problem," said Page. "India exports corn and soybean protein and China has 2.5 trillion dollars of hard currency reserves. These issues aren't necessarily of ability to feed people, but a willingness and commitment to do so."

Can the world feed itself? Yes, said Page.

When you break down the number of calories needed per malnourished person per day and convert that to tons of whole grains required to extinguish that hunger you get 30 million tons; 1/6 the amount of grain we converted to fuel globally last year. In the U.S. alone, 40% of our corn goes to ethanol.

"It isn't an issue of caloric famine-it is an issue of economic famine," stated Page. "In other words, this is not a food supply problem, but rather the lack of purchasing power to pay for a diet. An adequate price must be assured to reward the farmer for his efforts and to provide enough money that she can do it again the following year."

Rural sociology premium

What we face is the need to keep smallholders on the farm-despite the fact that they may not be the low-cost producer of foodstuffs-in order to avoid a rural population migration that would be unsustainable. As a result, the challenge the world faces is who is going to pay that rural sociology premium? If it costs more to raise crops on small farms is that burden going to be borne by the urban poor or is there going to be an alternative funding mechanism that allows smallholders to succeed?

Image Photo credit: Cargill

What is the survival price for a smallholder farmer? Page explained that if you wanted a family of four on a farm in sub-Saharan Africa to receive an income commensurate with the average per capita income of the urban population, you would come up with a price near $400 a ton.

"To put this in context, the highest price for maize that has ever been reached here in the United States is about $275 a ton," said Page. "This rural sociology premium to sustain smallholders is not an insignificant amount of money. How do we achieve fairness between the revenue received by the rural smallholder and the price borne by the urban consumer?"

State of disequilibrium - complacency to crisis

Today we are experiencing incredible price volatility where commodity prices are in a continuous state of disequilibrium. Very small changes in production have outsized impacts on price. This is in contrast to the last two and a half decades when the world operated with fairly robust stocks due to crop subsidies in the United States and Western Europe.

"This period of subsidization was when the western world probably did more harm to sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia than any other period in history," said Page. "We refused to allow price to signal to western farmers to produce less. As a result, the world price of grains fell far below the ability of any smallholder to compete. We then shipped those surpluses to developing countries, which then failed to invest in their agriculture for decades."

Today we are lurching from complacency to crisis. The ability of information and market speculation to be transmitted rapidly is affecting purchasing decisions of thousands to millions of consumers. Rising fuel prices, export restrictions, increasing demand for crops for biofuels, and unpredictable weather have all contributed to higher prices. Some of the drivers of price, however, are good things, such as the increase in per capita income and the capacity of more people to have a more dense and nutritious diet.

"Interestingly, the upside of the ethanol and biofuels program is that it brought prices back to a sufficiency that reinvigorated investment in agriculture," noted Page. "On one level I think a very good argument could be made that the biofuels program brought the world further from famine than it ever had been because of the price."

Critical food security factors

Page concluded by summarizing the elements that Cargill believes are critically important to increase food security. The first is the ability to understand the tradeoffs between a fast path to caloric sufficiency and the needs of rural sociology. Second, that crops be grown in the right soil, with the right technology, and relying on free trade so we can harvest competitive advantage to its fullest.

Another critical factor is rural property rights. Smallholders must have the ability to own the land, have access to it, and transfer it to future generations if you want a farmer to reinvest in his farm, said Page.

"Smallholders in developing countries need some degree of revenue certainty and access to a reliable market if we expect them to do what their countries really need them to do, which is raise productivity," explained Page. "Today they are often forced to sell at harvest, often below the cost of production, and lack the storage capabilities and capital to provide crops sufficiently and continuously."

Open, trust-based markets also play a key role in ensuring food security. Governments need to support trade. When Russia, Ukraine, and Argentina turned to embargos as a way to protect domestic food prices open markets were jeopardized and price volatility increased. Finally, there are very important roles for the world's governments in the creation of infrastructure that is vital to provide access to markets.

"I believe fully and completely in the world's capacity to harvest photosynthesis to feed every single person and to do it at prices that can be borne by all," concluded Page.