Last week The Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the Norman Borlaug Institute at Texas A&M announced a new collaboration based in South Africa at the Ukulima Farm Research Center to advance African Agriculture and Fight Hunger.

“It is my hope this collaboration will improve agricultural productivity across the African continent” said Mr. Buffet, “particularly for Africa’s poorest farmers.”

Interview with Dr. Edwin Price, Director of The Borlaug Institute:

Dr. Edwin Price at Ukulima Farm

AH: Is this a brand new initiative?

DP: No, Mr. Buffet has been involved in Africa in resource conservation and farming for quite a long time. He initially began largely focused on natural wildlife conservation, came to the conclusion that conserving wildlife, preserving wildlife in Africa was going to require feeding people. So he increasingly engaged in supporting agriculture research and agriculture development projects in Africa for that purpose. He began the farm that was announced yesterday as much as five years ago in the earliest stages of it and he brought it up to an operating level and attracted early collaborators and partners from various private research organizations as well as Universities and international research centers. So that group of partners has been working for three years or so. He’s asked that Texas A & M University, specifically the Borlaug Institute, with which we share the vision for Africa to become more involved in the management of the farm. And so what was announced yesterday was the new designation of the Borlaug Institute as the management entity for the nature conservation trust of South Africa, which is the operator of Ukulima farm.

AH: What are the goals?

DP: The goals are really to develop technology, usable by small African farmers to get their productivity up, to get their yields up. Maybe even to introduce resource saving technologies, energy saving technologies possibly. Working with minimum tillage, conservation farming. As well as advanced techniques – we really haven’t taken anything off the table in terms of looking at all the possibilities there are for improving small African farm productivity. We know that the need is there to improve small farm productivity in Africa and in a lot of places. We’ve been working cooperatively in other regimes in the Middle east for example where they face some of the same problems. Nevertheless we’re focused in this case through Ukulima Farm on small African farmers.

Our namesake, Dr. Norman Borlaug passed away a couple years ago but had made his early breakthrough in modern agricultural productivity in developing countries of Asia. He had enormous impact. At the time of his death he recognized, and despite his ten years of effort in Africa that the job still had to be done. In fact his parting wishes with colleagues was: “Don’t forget about Africa, I want you guys to carry on my work in Africa. So in that regard he felt that Mr. Buffets’ objectives and our objectives were highly consistent. And we are very pleased to have a partnership with him.

AH: How much of the work is this organization having to focus specifically on contending with water issues?

DP: Water issues are major. Both water quality and water availability. And also making sure you don’t impair water quality or availability through your technologies. So it’s both a problem for the input as well as what you leave for others, so it’s definitely a concern for the work. And we have some really good scientists who are coming on board to work with us on the hydrology and all about water use. Of course, our partners we’re working with now, for example Penn State University who was working there actually before we came on board is doing some very advanced work. For example on the root structure of plants – how root structures have an impact on the efficiency of that plant in utilizing water. That is really one of the foremost projects being undertaken on the farm right now. So yes, water is a major concern. Soil nutrients, natural processes in the soil that help to conserve soils’ fertility and feed plants at the same time are also a concern. So it’s not only a matter of the water. In fact Mr. Buffet has been party to recent discussions of something they call the Brown Revolution. And that is gaining a better understanding on soil management in tropical and underdeveloped countries.

AH: For those who would ask: Why focus on Africa, why not focus on the US, or why not focus on other areas, how would this organization respond?

DP: We think we’ve got to be working on these issues everywhere. In fact, the resources that we bring to the table from Borlaug Institute are the resources of Texas agriculture Agrilife research. We have 15 research experiment stations in the state of Texas in different regions faced with water concerns, flow, quality concerns, pest concerns all of that. So we regard the work in Africa as part of a worldwide fabric of effort to confront the problems of food security, water use and soil improvement in sustainability. And as far as Mr. Buffet, he is a farmer in the US himself. In fact, almost everything he does on the farm in Ukulima he has a companion project of the exact same treatments being undertaken on his farms in Illinois.

The Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture webpage: http://borlaug.tamu.edu/

No matter how large or small, every farmer thinks about how to manage agricultural water. They think about how they’ll get it, how they’ll conserve it, and how they’ll be able to produce more crops with less water. In this video by ABC Open, we see how one farmer struggles with water daily.

From ABC Open:

Kyle Wohling lives on a farm 50km north east of Esperance. To keep the crops growing and the stock alive water is critical. The past year has been unseasonally dry which has meant Kyle has had to cart water daily to ensure the sheep have enough water to survive.

Video by: CUNY J-School Video Storytelling

From the filmmakers:

Ben Schwartz, 32, always loved to farm from an early age. He spent his childhood in Nyack, New York, but his grandparents actually hail from the South Bronx. They left in the ‘60s, during a period of white flight, and Ben always wanted to go back and “deal with some of the problems they fled.”

Those problems are grave. In a 2011 report, the Food Research Action Center found that 32.7% of South Bronx residents experience “food hardship,” or difficulty paying for food. Mott Haven and Hunts Point have the highest proportion of diabetes in the city. One in four adults in Hunts Point and Mott Haven are obese, compared with one in five citywide. Schwartz reasoned that the combination of lack of income and obesity would undoubtedly lead to untreatable illness.

“I figured out by listening to the community the best way to support the folks in these neighborhoods was through medicinal herbs,” said Schwartz. “You can get a lot more out of your money by buying a three dollar bag of burdock than you could buying a 50 dollar bottle of pharmaceuticals.”

Now he and his team go down to the South Bronx once a week selling the herbs. They are partially funded by donors, but money is tight and many people on staff at the farm are volunteers. Schwartz admits that it’s not ideal, but maintains that there aren’t a lot of sources of revenue for small farmers in a market dominated by corporate-owned farms.

Video by: Darby Films

From the filmmakers:

An excerpt from the ANDE Global Video that we entered in a Social Innovation contest at mckinseyonsociety.com.

Video by: Nebraska Entrepreneur

Video by: Anna Bon

From the filmmaker:

The Web Alliance for Regreening in Africa is a team set up by the VU University Amsterdam, the World Wide Web Foundation and Sahel Eco, Mali. W4RA aims to expand the World Wide Web by creating a communication platform where people can create, access and share their knowledge, even if they don’t have an internet connection, but only a simple mobile phone.

W4RA is a global networked community involving computer scientists, farmers, local radio stations and ICT entrepreneurs in Mali, Burkina Faso and Ghana. This community is working together to create the Open Web of Speech that will empower people and support Regreening Initiatives in Africa.

Video presented by: Sawa World Youth :

This video was made by a Sawa Youth Reporter in Uganda. They get a monthly fee to make these videos and document local and proven solutions to extreme poverty. These videos are shared with local media and surrounding communities with the goal to inspire people who live in extreme poverty to solve their own poverty issues with locally created approaches.

This video is made by Tito Mukiibi

One solution to the immense waste problem: Gleaning, whereby local community organizations rescue crops that would otherwise be buried under the plow blade.

Video by: Shannon Pence

A one-of-a-kind nonprofit organization that plants and harvests crops free of charge for family farmers who have suffered a major illness, injury or natural disaster.

Farmrescue.org

Video by: Redux Pictures

Video by: Medill News Service