Investing in the World's Farmers

Is empowering small farmers in the developing world the best way to help people escape poverty? Bill Gates is betting it is.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the foundation he runs with his wife, has committed $120 million to the project of getting smallholder farmers the resources and support they need to up their crop yields and yank themselves up from hunger and deprivation.

In his first major speech on agricultural development, delivered last week at the World Food Prize event in Iowa, Gates explained his belief in the need to invest in more effective seed varieties, targeted training, increased market access and policy initiatives that advantage small farmers, according to a foundation press release.

The International Fund for Agricultural Development, a specialized agency of the United Nations, asserts that agricultural systems began declining in the 1970s due to a widespread perception among world leaders that farming was not profitable. Aid to agriculture slipped from 18 percent of total international assistance in 1979 to 2.9 percent in 2006, and domestic developing-country investment in agriculture declined as well, by around one-third across Africa and up to two-thirds in Asia and Latin America.

Without investment in infrastructure and supportive policies, agricultural productivity plummeted, knocking global food stocks down by around 3.4 per cent a year since 1995. Less food has led to lessened accessibility and higher prices, which has increased food insecurity and hunger.

Now, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 800 million people suffer from chronic hunger and malnutrition in large part because of insufficient investment in addressing food insecurity, which occurs when food is unavailable, too expensive or distributed in inappropriate ways.

"Melinda and I believe that helping the poorest small-holder farmers grow more crops and get them to market is the world's single most powerful lever for reducing hunger and poverty," Gates said. It appears that he has an excellent point.

What remains to be seen is whether the investments his foundation makes will spur increases of the production of the right kinds of foods and benefit the people who really need the help. Gates should aim to encourage the development of systems unlike the one here in the U.S., which supports abundance of the wrong kinds of foods and benefits those who already have the greatest advantages.

Photo courtesy of AGRA, via flickr