Bill Gates yesterday announced nine grants totalling $120 million to help small farmers and “span the value chain.”
By Chris Farnell
In a speech at the World Food Symposium Bill Gates laid out the importance of combating world hunger. The announcement comes on the eve of World Food Day, and after the Food and Agriculture Organisation announced some countries would have to double their food production by 2050 to keep up with the growing population.
“The world’s attention is back on your cause,” Bill Gates said.
SCIENCE-BASED SOLUTIONS
The grants, which will come from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will go towards funding for research, as well as training and resources for governments. Included in the package is funding for legumes that fix nitrogen in the soil, as well as high yielding varieties of sorghum and millet.
The package will also seek to help educate government officials in Africa so that they can make “science-based decisions, customized to local conditions, about what advances will best serve farmers, customers, and the environment.”
The foundation has already collaborated with an African foundation to develop drought-tolerant maize with a combination of conventional breeding and biotechnology. It is also helping to develop a variety of rice that can survive underwater for two weeks for use in flood-prone areas in Bangladesh and India - who granted approval for the first GM food crop yesterday.
Source: http://www.gatesfoundation.org/
Edited by Ellie Duncan