Not many years ago, global health advocates bemoaned the fact that it took decades for life-saving vaccines to become widely accessible in poorer countries. This resulted in the unnecessary deaths of millions of children every year. Today, however, childhood vaccines are available nearly everywhere. This was thanks to global partnerships between governments, industry and philanthropists.
Unfortunately, the same is not true of agricultural technologies, which can also be life-saving. In poor countries, low agricultural productivity and soil degradation are factors driving chronic hunger and malnutrition and associated sickness and premature death. Indeed, malnutrition contributes to almost half of all child deaths.