Interactive Experience Allows Students to Help African Farmers Remedy Food Shortage.

Web module part of free curriculum offered through Nutrients for Life Foundation.

Washington, D.C. — As a free educational aid from the Nutrients for Life Foundation, students can now go online and participate in an interactive experience that allows them to help solve the severe food shortage faced by Africa.

Designed for students from grades 7 to 10, the interactive web module welcomes the students to Africa as volunteers for an organization called Humanity Against Hunger. Following a slide presentation on Africa and the potential famine it faces due to soil nutrient depletion, the volunteers are taken to a rural village. Here they encounter three maize farmers, each of whom faces a different crop problem. In each scenario, the farmer describes his or her growing conditions and then shows the students photos of afflicted maize plants. Using a Field Manual, students must analyze each situation, offer a diagnosis and then recommend a remedy. Only by offering a farmer the right diagnosis are the students allowed to move on.

Through the interactive experience students learn how nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous deficiencies can stunt plant growth in different ways. They also learn how replenishing these nutrients by fertilizing can help farmers achieve higher yields of crops to feed more people.

Because the Humanity for Hunger program is free and on the Internet, it can either be used as an in-class learning aid, or assigned as homework. The interactive module is just one part of a comprehensive standards-based curriculum program underwritten by the Nutrients for Life Foundation to provide hands-on classroom applications to help tomorrow's generation realize the challenge of feeding our growing population. All free curriculum aids can be found at the Foundation's website: nutrientsforlife.org/curriculum.aspx.

Nutrients for Life Foundation is a tax-exempt organization as described in Section 501( c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code and is incorporated in the State of Delaware. The Foundation was formed to disseminate educational information to the general public, including policy makers, about fertilizers, modern agriculture and the role plant nutrients serve in improving people's lives.