Maria Rosalina: On a Mission to Improve Productivity and Nutrition in Brazil
Brazil boasts eight crops under its biofortification program. A priority for the program is the country’s northeastern semi-arid region, where human development scores are low. Piauí, one of the states in that region, has registered impressive results with biofortified crops. Harvests of vitamin A-rich orange sweet potato, in particular, exceed 25 tons per hectare; the national average for non-biofortified sweet potato is 8 tons.
Maria Rosalina, or "Our Maria" as she is affectionately known, is dedicated to getting more people in her community growing and making a living from these nutritious, high yielding, and climate-smart crops. And that might just be the answer to the out-migration of people from small farms in her region to large urban centers in search of livelihoods.