Gates Takes on World Hunger

“[Bill] Gates recently described himself as a ‘city boy,’ but spoke with typical wonkish intensity about wheat rust, marker-assisted selection and finger-millet outputs. ‘The world moved away from a focus on seeds and plant disease in a dangerous way for 20 years,’” he told Michael Gerson of the Washington Post. He says “Gates is determined to push a revival. His reasons are strategic. Approximately three-quarters of Africans are employed in agriculture, but about 30 percent of people on the continent suffer from hunger and malnutrition. Over the next few decades, African farmers will need to feed a growing population without expanding into ecologically important lands, while adapting to climate disruptions that make drought, pests and floods more common. They will need Gates’s help, and more.”