Gates Foundation to boost agricultural grants
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced Friday that it would greatly increase agricultural grants designed to reduce hunger and poverty in Africa and South Asia.
The $306-million commitment over four years included $164.5 million to the Nairobi, Kenya-based Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, for efforts to improve soils and help small farmers boost crop yields. The Rockefeller Foundation contributed an additional $15 million to the effort.
Smaller Gates Foundation grants will assist research on hardier rice strains, provide better irrigation methods to small farmers and help develop superior coffee beans for export.
Grants totaling $48 million, to Little Rock, Ark.-based Heifer International and CARE, in Atlanta, are meant to help dairy farmers and landless peasants in East Africa and Bangladesh improve milk quality and build access to markets.
“If we are serious about ending extreme hunger and poverty around the world, we must be serious about transforming agriculture for small farmers,” Bill Gates, co-chairman of the foundation, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
Last month a Los Angeles Times investigation described how hunger and food insecurity in Africa -- where many people live on less than $1 a day -- had often undermined Gates Foundation efforts to treat AIDS and other diseases.
The foundation primarily has emphasized health research and the provision of medicines and vaccines in grants to developing nations. The new funds would nearly double its prior commitments in agriculture, a field Gates said had been neglected in recent decades.
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