Paul Osterlund is helping farmers in developing countries increase their crop yields.

When Paul Osterlund retired from Intel Corp. after 23 years as a designer and engineer, he figured he’d find a way to educate people about technology. His favorite experiences at Intel involved centers that let the public experience technology powered by Intel’s microprocessors.

“I hadn’t even considered a social venture as a follow-up to my engineering career,” Osterlund says.

Two years later, Osterlund’s Abundance Farming Project is helping subsistence farmers in Africa, India, China and South America improve their yields and increase their incomes with a soil additive that helps dirt hold moisture longer.

Osterlund credits a former colleague at Intel, Amy Pearl, for his encore career. Pearl’s organization, Springboard Innovation, based in Portland, Oregon, provides training, mentorship and resources to budding social entrepreneurs, helping them build self-sustaining organizations to take on some of the world’s toughest problems. Osterlund’s chosen challenge: water scarcity, which affects 1.2 billion people, according to a recent U.N. survey.

Several years earlier, Osterlund had invested in a company that developed a agricultural product called Zeba, which began 30 years ago as a U.S. Department of Agriculture research project. He saw how the granular material could be added to soil to make it hold moisture longer and help subsistence farmers in drought-prone, underdeveloped regions around the world grow more crops.

With help from Springboard, he founded the nonprofit Abundance Farming Project (AFP) in 2009 with the goal of distributing enough Zeba in five years so that 1 million subsistence farming households can grow their way out of poverty.

Osterlund’s model gradually transfers responsibility to local farmers. He provides Zeba to subsistence farmers to develop “New Farmer Starts,” small plots that can be evaluated to demonstrate the effectiveness of the product. For an initial period, international aid agencies and nongovernmental organizations underwrite material and transportation costs, which are gradually taken over by local farmers after their increased yields start to produce profits. Later, community-run distribution and even manufacturing of the product provides and reduces costs.

Results from a pilot project his organization funded in Peru show a substantial increase in agricultural yields. The project, which was developed by the International Potato Center in the Huancayo Valley east of Lima found Zeba increased crop yields by 10 percent above untreated potato plots in the area.

Zeba helped produce a bountiful harvest of yams and cassavas in southern Nigeria. “At least 38 families have benefited from the early harvest of maize and vegetables during the short dry season,” reports Nnaemeka Ikegwouno, head of the Smallholders Foundation of Nigeria, which is running an AFP-funded project.

Osterlund’s model for addressing water scarcity makes use of his engineering experience. “The experiences that I have brought forward from my professional career apply very directly to what I am doing today,” he says.

Osterlund attributes his success in launching AFP in part to the training and resources provided by Springboard’s “Local Agenda” program. He finds the pace of developing a new nonprofit organization to be very slow compared to the “light-speed” pace of events in the high-tech world. But Osterlund would not give up his work for anything. Starting a social venture has been the most rewarding work he has ever done.

“Water scarcity is one of the biggest problems the world faces today,” he says. “So if you can make a difference on that problem, you will have a very big impact.”