The Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations (Gates Ag One) organization has expressed a desire to help accelerate crop innovations reaching — and benefiting — smallholders in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Here is some background information on attempts to improve smallholder welfare that may be of value.
History of Gates approach
Bill Gates and his advisors investigated methods for reducing global poverty in 1990. At the time Mr. Gates was forming a new company called Teledesic that planned to offer broadband connectivity using a constellation of low-earth-orbit satellites. He wanted ideas that concurrently addressed “Global Issues”. These “Global Issues” are:
· Health
· Food
· Water
· Energy
· Education
· Environment Protection
· Security
· Population Shift
· Governance
· Crime
Solving all Global Issues concurrently proved to be an overwhelming problem. My company management, who supported the Teledesic project, suggested to Mr. Gates that I hire people from 10 different countries to prepare a report that showed how the Teledesic project might help solve one of the 10 Global issues in each of the 10 countries. In contrast, Mr. Gates decided to concentrate on the Gates Foundation instead. The Gates Foundation in turn limited the focus on the Global Issues to four issues:
· Health
· Food
· Energy
· Education.
In this way the Foundation would not be over committed financially.
A problem with the Gates Foundation more focused approach is that a poverty program may fail due to a “Global Issue” not being addressed. In many countries political violence and crime could ruin a well-constructed food security, youth employment, and poverty reduction project. The Gates Ag One organization needs to ensure that all “Global Issues” are addressed even though their primary focus is on food. University personnel with help from government officials, technical personnel, and NGO personnel can support the Gates Foundation by identifying better methods for small farmers to earn a living. University personnel must fully flush out the risks of “Global Issues” ruining their good intentions. The Harvard “Case Method” and Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR) principles have proven to be helpful in providing a structured method to study the consequences of each idea.
A second problem with the Gates Foundation approach is that they do not supply a small farm plan that people in poverty can follow. How should small-scale growers reduce their production costs and optimize their profitability? What equipment and supplies should they buy? What laws need to be changed and what investments should national governments make to help small scale farmers?
Small scale farmers do not get grants. They often get loans with high interest rates. They cannot obtain farm insurance. Their costs to transport their products to market may be large. They must support their families using the resources that are available. They must pay their rent and other bills. These are the problems that Dr. Whatley addressed.
History of Booker T Whatley approach
Professor Booker T Whatley (Tuskegee University) developed an approach for helping small southern farm holders in the United States that was very different than the approach used by the Gates Foundation. Dr. Whatley developed a small farm plan for poor black southern family farmers that was designed to net $100,000 a year for farmers who had 25 acres of land. See https://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/small-farm-plan-zmaz82mjzkin/
Dr. Whatley noted:
“The truth is that we professional agronomists have helped create the situation that exists today. We’ve made life h”rd on the small farmers by recommending that they grow exactly what the big boys produce. We’ll tell a little guy with 40 acres to plant a scaled-down version of the crop mix that some fellow with 2,000 acres raises. For example, we’ll suggest that he keeps fifteen acres in cotton, ten acres in soybeans, seven acres in corn, seven in pasture and then try to raise a few head of beef cattle. Well, those particular crops give a very low per-acre return, so what happens? The man works hard and just about starves to death.
I say let the big boys grow soybeans, cotton, hay, peanuts and beef cattle. The plan I’m talking about takes the small farmer out of the big guys’ ballpark.”
Dr. Whatley’s plan was adopted by many small farmers in the United States. It is based on developing a plan that meets five essential criteria for the success of this small-farm operation. The criteria are:
1. Each crop component of a limited-resource farm must produce an annual gross minimum income of $3,000.
2. The components of the farm must provide year-round family income.
3. The components of the farm must be compatible. They shouldn’t compete with each other for labor, and you don’t want everything coming in at once.
4. The farm must provide year-round full employment.
5. The farm should be a pick-your-own operation, with a clientele membership club.
Dr. Whatley’s small farm plan criteria were adopted by small farmers throughout the United States. Dr. Whately’s basic principles and the five critical guidelines can be applied almost anywhere. The crop mix will vary from area to area — you must raise products that grow and sell well where you live — but the plan’s basic principles, and the five critical guidelines mentioned, can be applied almost anywhere based on local conditions. Dr Whatley added 10 commandments to further aid small farmers. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booker_T._Whatley. These commandments were:
Thy small farm shalt:
I. Provide year-round, daily cash flow.
II. Be a pick-your-own operation.
III. Have a guaranteed market with a Clientele Membership Club.
IV. Provide year-round, full-time employment.
V. Be located on a hard-surfaced road within a radius of 40 miles of a population center of at least 50,000, with well-drained soil and an excellent source of water.
VI. Produce only what they clients demand—and nothing else!
VII. Shun middlemen and middlewomen like the plague, for they are a curse upon thee.
VIII. Consist of compatible, complementary crop components that earn a minimum of $3,000 per acre annually.
IX. Be 'weatherproof', at least as far as possible with both drip and sprinkler irrigation.
X. Be covered by a minimum of $250,000 worth ($1 million is better) of liability insurance.
What approach should African farmers use?
Both the Gates approach and the Whatley approach are valuable. The Whatley approach to small farm development focuses almost entirely on small farm profits. It is the approach that Asian farmers use extensively. Asian farmers do not focus on “global issues”, “technological breakthroughs” biodiversity, or climate change. The Asian path to reducing poverty has been very successful. NGOs that focus on “global issues” and “technological breakthroughs” may be of more use to big farmers. Bill Gates addressed this issue in his Gates note “Can the Asian miracle happen in Africa? Can the lessons from Asia’s rise apply on another continent?" See https://www.gatesnotes.com/How-Asia-Works. . Bill Gates thought so much of Joe Studwell’s book "How Asia Works" that he bought copies for his entire staff.
Dr. Paul Rigterink