One of the trainers, Sandra Kavira Kawisse, says fertilizer can even save marriages. She says in one area, many of the men had left their wives and gone to work in the mines. Then their wives started using fertilizer and their yields of rice tripled. The IFDC has found that when the men work with the women, the harvests are nine tons a hectare compared with six tons when the women work alone.

Dutch scientist Henk Breman designed the fertilizer project. He says the Democratic Republic of Congo uses less chemical fertilizer per hectare than any other country. Mr. Breman suggests two reasons. One is a lack of government policy. The other is the influence of donors and international nongovernmental organizations that were against more intensive ways of farming.

HENK BREMAN: "There has been a period of about twenty years where donor support was dominated by policies that looked for other ways of developing agriculture than the intensive way elsewhere. I really accuse the donors and the international NGOs for part of the famine in Africa."

Edwige Mungwana Kavor is a local agronomist who works for Mercy Corps, an NGO. She says she is not against adding chemical fertilizer to organic matter. But she says land can become dependent on chemical fertilizers and no longer produce without them. Also, the chemicals can pollute groundwater.

Henk Breman agrees farmers should mix it with organic fertilizer. But he says there is a much bigger risk from soil erosion in the Kivu region.