The Gates Foundation, well established in supporting research on global health, has been quietly expanding its reach to Third World agriculture. And on Thursday Bill Gates (at right visiting a Nigerian farm) used the occasion of his keynote address to the World Food Prize symposium in Des Moines, Iowa, to announce that his foundation has committed $1.4 billion to the cause. It was Gates’s first major speech on agriculture, and he used part of it to attack environmentalists who oppose the use of genetically engineered seeds.

The Des Moines Register’s Philip Brasher quoted Gates as saying some environmentalists are “instantly hostile to any emphasis on productivity,” ignoring the threat to future crop yields posed by global warming. “They act as if there is no emergency, even though in the poorest, hungriest places on Earth, population is growing faster than productivity, and the climate is changing.”

Brasher noted that Gates promised that GM seeds developed with the foundation’s money would be licensed royalty-free and cost farmers no more than conventional seed.

Michael Gerson, a Washington Post Op-Ed columnist, noted that other groups including the U.S. president and the G-20 have also added to their agenda funding for a new Green Revolution.  Gerson writes that in a conversation with the philanthropist “Gates 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 me. Gates is determined to push a revival.”

In a curtain raiser on Wednesday Seattle Times business reporter Kristi Heim wrote this:

“Gates will argue that the ‘ideological wedge’ between groups who disregard environmental concerns and groups who discount productivity gains could thwart major breakthroughs that are within reach.

” ‘It’s a false choice, and it’s dangerous for the field,’ Gates said in advance excerpts from the speech. ‘It blocks important advances. It breeds hostility among people who need to work together. And it makes it hard to launch a comprehensive program to help poor farmers. The fact is, we need both productivity and sustainability — and there is no reason we can’t have both.’ ”

-Boyce Rensberger

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 12:11 pm and is filed under Environment & Energy Stories, Science Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.