The Gateses and Howard Buffett Pledge $75-Million to Anti-Hunger Effort

The Bill & Melinda Gates and the Howard G. Buffett Foundations last week pledged a total of $75-million to help farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and other impoverished areas sell their surplus crops to support anti-hunger efforts.

The program, called Purchase for Progress, is designed to improve the World Food Programme’s ability to purchase food from small or subsistence farmers.

Currently, the United Nations agency, which is based in Rome, buys about $1-billion worth of food, but only a fraction of that comes from growers in the regions where the organization provides assistance.

The Gates foundation, in Seattle, has pledged $66-million toward the effort, and the Buffett organization, in Decatur, Ill., $9.1-million.

By buying produce and other staples in impoverished regions, the relief group can react more quickly to natural disasters or war, while also putting cash in the hands of needy farming families, the organizations said.

As part of the effort, the World Food Programme will purchase more commodities from farming cooperatives and offer a “secure market” to some growers by guaranteeing the purchase of surplus crops over a multiyear period.

“Without that kind of market, all of the risk is on the small-scale farmer,” said David Stevenson, the organization’s director of policy, planning, and strategy.

He said that with dwindling food supplies worldwide, the rising cost of fuel, and the increasing threat of climate change and civil conflict, more innovative ways of providing food assistance need to be attempted.

“What we really need is a revolution in how we address hunger and hunger solutions. We need new tools and methods,” he said.

Purchase for Progress, or P4P as it is called, will also help farmers package their goods to meet international standards and support efforts to convert crops into more-lucrative commodities. For example, in Zambia the World Food Programme is helping to build a mill to turn cassava plants into flour.

“You need to improve access to markets and create the financial and commercial incentives so that farmers are rewarded for their additional efforts to produce more stable crops and to improve the quality of post-harvest processing,” said Rajiv Shah, director of agricultural projects for the Gates foundation.

He noted that 70 percent of the 1.1 billion people who live on $1 a day or less depend on their own farming to generate food and income.

The goal of the effort is to assist 350,000 farmers in 21 countries over the next five years.

The Buffett foundation is giving money to make sure the program reaches nations recovering from war, such as buying 2,000 metric tons of locally grown rice from Sierra Leone, said Mr. Buffett, the foundation’s founder and son of the billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

Global Focus

The announcement of the new program came as world leaders debated antipoverty solutions.

In New York, the United Nations General Assembly this week held a meeting on the Millennium Development Goals, a set of economic-development, health, and education objectives, such as halving the number of the world’s poor and halting the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015.

Bill Gates is slated to speak about the goals, which some aid experts have said are unlikely to be met.

The Gates foundation’s contribution to Purchase for Progress is part of its growing area of grant making for agriculture development, which before Purchase for Progress primarily focused on increasing crop production.

For example, in 2006 started the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa with the Rockefeller Foundation, which seeks to develop high-yield crop varieties that are better adapted to the continent’s varied environments.

Mr. Shah said the foundation would like other donors to join the Purchase for Progress effort as well.

“Ultimately the success and sustainability of the program will depend on attracting a broader range or partners, donors, small farmers, and perhaps other private-sector purchasers to do the types of things that WFP is going to pioneer with this effort,” he said.

However, the world’s biggest supplier of food aid, the U.S. government, has yet to sign on to the new program.

The United States has received criticism for preferring to ship tons of American farm products to hungry people rather than providing cash, which could be used to purchase locally grown food.

Mr. Stevenson, of the World Food Programme, said that he is “cautiously optimistic” that the United States might join the program.

“We are currently in more-detailed discussions with the U.S. about potential cash contributions,” which would benefit Purchase for Progress, he said.

Mr. Buffett went further, calling on the U.S. government to double the amount it provides in food aid annually, with a significant portion of it in cash.

“We are one of the wealthiest countries in the world, we have one of the strongest agricultural systems in the world, and if we don’t do it, the question is, who will do it?” he asked.

He admitted, however, that such a plea will probably fall on deaf ears, given the current global financial crisis.

“Getting that done in this environment is very difficult,” he said.