At a recent event held in the U.S. State Department, Bill Gates and Howard G. Buffett were presented the World Food Program USA (WFP USA)’s 10th Annual George McGovern Leadership Award for their contributions to end global hunger.
Gates and Buffett are the joint recipients for their leadership in establishing the Purchase for Progress (P4P) program at the World Food Program (WFP).
P4P is an innovative public-private partnership helping small farmers in developing countries become suppliers for WFP’s large-scale food programs. The long-term goal of P4P is to help farmers connect to other markets and that’s already happening. In Liberia, Sierra Leone, Zambia, and several other nations in sub-Saharan Africa (as well as in Asia and Latin America), WFP is not only buying locally, but helping small farmers gain the skills necessary to be part of the global market.
At next week’s G20 Summit in Cannes, France, Gates will deliver a report outlining how innovations and partnerships in health and agriculture can help increase global stability and put the poorest countries and people on a long-term path to economic growth and equality.
“I’ll be taking a message to the G20 that we can’t turn our backs on the world’s poorest, even in these tough economic times,” Gates said. “Our current fiscal crisis shouldn’t force cuts in programs like agriculture that build self-sufficiency, pay huge returns, and advance stability and economic growth.”
By Supriya Kumar
Danielle Nierenberg, an expert on livestock and sustainability, currently serves as Project Director of State of World 2011 for the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based environmental think tank. Her knowledge of factory farming and its global spread and sustainable agriculture has been cited widely in the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, and
other publications.
Danielle worked for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. She is currently traveling across Africa looking at innovations that are working to alleviate hunger and poverty and blogging everyday at Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet. She has a regular column with the Mail & Guardian, the Kansas City Star, and the Huffington Post and her writing was been featured in newspapers across Africa including the Cape Town Argus, the Zambia Daily Mail, Coast Week (Kenya), and other African publications. She holds an M.S. in agriculture, food, and environment from Tufts University and a B.A. in environmental policy from Monmouth College.
