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Contents
Foreword by Warren E. Buffett
Introduction: One Shot at a Warlord
Part 1. The Roots of “40 Chances”
Story 1. The Day I Heard the Clock Tick
Story 2. Prague, 1968: The Soviet Army Eats First—“We Just Get What Is Left”
Story 3. From Bulldozing Dirt to Building Soil
Story 4. Devon’s Gift
Story 5. Because “Al Called”
Story 6. The Ovarian Lottery
Story 7. Reality Has a Nutty Taste, Especially When Fried
Story 8. Where Hunger Hides
Part 2. Bravery, Courage, and Hope
Story 9. Loved but Lost
Story 10. Empty Calories
Story 11. Little Cromite
Story 12. Sex and Hunger in Timbuktu
Story 13. Loss in Armenia
Story 14. Farming Under Fire
Story 15. Seeds of Change
Story 16. Shakira
Story 17. A Franciscan Padre in the Sierra Madre
Story 18. Gorillas Versus Guerrillas
Part 3. Hard-Learned Lessons
Story 19. Can This Village Be Saved?
Story 20. A Complicated Legacy
Story 21. For Yields to Go Up, We Have to Look Down
Story 211/2. Owners Make Better Farmers
Story 22. Disconnects
Story 23. What Does Doing Better Look Like? by Howard W. Buffett
Story 24. “Who Came Up with This Crazy Idea?”
Story 25. A Six-Beer Insight
Story 26. Less Than Sparkling
Part 4. Challenges We Need to Figure Out
Story 27. Elephants and Experts
Story 28. Can Smarter Carrots Save Soil?
Story 29. Chains That Unlock Potential by Howard W. Buffett
Story 30. Women May Be Key, but Don’t Ignore Men
Story 31. Souped-Up Yields from Stripped-Down Tools
Story 32. Does Aid Plant Seeds of Violence? by Howard W. Buffett
Part 5. Reasons to Hope
Story 33. Opening What Once Was Cerrado
Story 34. Chocolate-Covered Opportunities
Story 35. Fired Up in Ghana
Story 36. Buy Local!
Story 37. Hungry for Data
Story 38. The Power of a Piece of Paper
Story 39. Farmer of the Future by Howard W. Buffett
Story 40. A New Approach to Governance
Epilogue: A Pessimistic Optimist Returns to Prague
Acknowledgments
About Howard G. Buffett
Notes
Index
This book is dedicated to the two most important women in my life: my wife, Devon, and my mother, Susie
Foreword
My late wife, Susie, and I had our first child soon after we were married—though not, she would want me to add, so soon as to raise questions in that more judgmental era. We named her Susie as well, and she proved to be such an easy baby to handle that we quickly planned for another child. The difficulties of parenthood, my wife and I concluded, had been vastly overhyped.
And then Howard Graham Buffett arrived seventeen months later in December 1954. After a few months of coping with him, Susie Sr. and I decided an extended pause was essential before our having a third (and last) child, Peter. For Howie was a force of nature, a tiny perpetual-motion machine. Susie had plenty of days when she felt life would have been easier if she had instead given birth to some boring triplets.
Howie was named after two of my heroes, men who remain heroes to me as I write this almost six decades later. First, and forever foremost, was my dad, Howard, who in his every word and act shaped my life. Ben Graham was an obvious choice as well, a wonderful teacher whose ideas enabled me to accumulate a large fortune. Howie began life in big shoes.
Through Howie’s early years, I had no idea as to what direction his life would take. My own dad had given me a terrific gift: he told me, both verbally and by his behavior, that he cared only about the values I had, not the particular path I chose. He simply said that he had unlimited confidence in me and that I should follow my dreams.
I was thereby freed of all expectations except to do my best. This was such a blessing for me that it was natural for me to behave similarly with my own children. In this aspect of child raising—as well as virtually all others—Susie Sr. and I were totally in sync.
Our “It’s your life” message produced one particularly interesting outcome: none of our three children completed college, though each certainly had the intellect to do so. Neither Susie Sr. nor I were at all bothered by this. Besides, as I often joke, if the three combine their college credits, they would be entitled to one degree that they could rotate among themselves.
I don’t believe that leaving college early has hindered the three in any way. They, like every Omaha Buffett from my grandfather to my great-grandchildren, attended public grammar and high schools. In fact, almost all of these family members, including our three children, went to the same inner-city, long-integrated high school, where they mixed daily with classmates from every economic and social background. In those years, they may have learned more about the world they live in than have many individuals with postgrad educations.
Howie started by zigzagging through life, looking for what would productively harness his boundless energy. In this book, he tells of how he found his path and the incredible journeys that resulted from his discovery. It’s a remarkable tale, told exactly as it happened. As Howie describes his activities—some successful, others not—they supply a guidebook for intelligent philanthropy.
Howie’s love of farming makes his work particularly helpful to the millions of abject poor whose only hope is the soil. His fearlessness has meanwhile exposed him to an array of experiences more common to adventurers than philanthropists. Call him the Indiana Jones of his field.
It’s Howie’s story to tell. I want, however, to add my own tribute to the two women who made him what he is today: a man working with passion, energy, and intelligence to better the lives of those less fortunate. It began with his remarkable mother. Fortunately, the genes from her side were dominant in shaping Howie.
Anyone who knew Susie Sr. would understand why I say this. Simply put, she had more genuine concern for others than anyone I’ve ever known. Every person she met—rich or poor, black or white, old or young—immediately sensed that she saw him or her simply as a human being, equal in value to any other on the planet.
Without in any way being a Pollyanna, or giving up enjoyment in her own life, Susie connected with a multitude of diverse people in ways that changed their lives. No one can match the touch she had, but Howie comes close. And he is on a par with her in terms of heart.
Howie nevertheless needed Devon, his wife of thirty-one years, to center him. And that need continues. Much as Susie provided the love that enabled me to find myself, Devon nurtures Howie. Both he and I were not the easiest humans to deal with daily and up close; each of us can pursue our interests with an intensity that leaves us oblivious to what is going on around us. But both of us were also incredibly lucky in finding extraordinary women who loved us enough to eventually soften our rough edges.
His mother’s genes and teachings—usually nonverbal but delivered powerfully by her actions—gave Howie his ever-present desire to help others. In that pursuit, his only speed is fast-forward. My money has helped him carry ou
t his plans in recent years on a larger scale than is available to most teachers and philanthropists. I couldn’t be happier about the result.
Most of the world’s seven billion people found their destinies largely determined at the moment of birth. There are, of course, plenty of Horatio Alger stories in this world. Indeed, America abounds with them. But for literally billions of people, where they are born and who gives them birth, along with their gender and native intellect, largely determine the life they will experience.
In this ovarian lottery, my children received some lucky tickets. Many people who experience such good fortune react by simply enjoying their position in life and trying to ensure that their children enjoy similar benefits. This approach is understandable, though it can become distasteful when it is accompanied by a smug “If I can do it, why can’t everyone else?” attitude.
Still, I would hope that many of the world’s fortunate—particularly Americans who have benefited so dramatically from the deeds of our forefathers—would aspire to more. We do sit in the shade of trees planted by others. While enjoying the benefits dealt us, we should do a little planting ourselves.
I feel very good about the fact that my children realize how lucky they have been. I feel even better because they have decided to spend their lives sharing much of the product of that luck with others. They do not feel at all guilty because of their good fortune—but they do feel grateful. And this they express through the expenditure of their time and my money, with their part of this equation without question the more important.
In this book, you will read about some of Howie’s extraordinary projects. Forgive a parent when I say I couldn’t be more proud of him, as would his mother be if she were alive to watch him. As you read his words, you will understand why.
Warren E. Buffett
Introduction
One Shot at a Warlord
The camp commander had just told me that two of the soldiers on our side were eaten by crocodiles the previous week. That got my attention. But as I stood in a clearing of scrub trees in the hot, dry desert of South Sudan, I realized that the thin man walking toward me, leaning on a cane, was much more dangerous than any croc. Crocodiles attack when they are hungry or their turf or young are threatened. I was about to meet General Caesar Acellam, an African warlord who had helped lead a campaign of murder, rape, torture, and enslavement across at least four countries. He was a top lieutenant in the psychopath Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army. As such, Acellam had hunted the most vulnerable people on the planet—poor, starving children—to turn thousands of boys into sadistic soldiers and girls into sex slaves.
It was May 2012, and the temperature was over one hundred degrees. I had flown into this remote camp in a Cessna Caravan turboprop just minutes before, and the sweat was pouring out of me. There were tents and Mi-8 transport helicopters and Mi-24 attack helicopters parked under camouflage tarps. The dirt landing strip and the camp clearing were barely visible when we began our descent. There was an unmistakable, almost electrical, charge of pride among the Ugandan army leaders who hosted us. For months their men had camped in the jungle and tracked and finally ambushed Acellam just a few days before along the banks of the River Mbou in the nearby Central African Republic (CAR)—the same river where crocs had claimed their comrades.
The LRA’s evil campaign is more than a quarter century old. Its soldiers are vicious fighters with a twisted loyalty to the messianic Kony. He and the LRA are blamed for displacing around two million people and forcing upwards of sixty thousand children to fight for him during his more than two decades of spreading mayhem through what’s called the Great Lakes region of Africa.1 At the time of my visit, Ugandan soldiers had been leading an effort to hunt the LRA down in CAR. Kony and his followers have been on the run and have lost many supporters in the last several years, but they are skilled jungle fighters and difficult to find.
Kony has left a trail of death, mutilation, and misery. A young woman who looked to be about twenty also walked toward me with the forty-nine-year-old Acellam. The Ugandan commander explained that she was one of the thousands of girls Acellam and his followers had abducted and raped, and had been living as Acellam’s “wife.” She was holding the hand of a little girl with an angelic face who looked to be about two years old: Acellam’s daughter. The young woman’s body language was striking. She clearly felt she had to stand near Acellam, yet she leaned away as if she were a magnet being repelled by a colliding charge. I fished in my pocket and produced a Tootsie Pop and handed it to the child. Her mother smiled at me and helped the little girl unwrap it.
Acellam was being held under armed guards, but the Tootsie Pop was a weapon for my own personal mission that day. Others included my cameras, jars of peanut butter and jelly, and a few slices of bread. I am an experienced photographer of life in the developing world, both its fragile beauty and its dark, difficult sides. A friend of mine who is an advocate for impoverished and exploited people all over the world, and who supports the hunt for Kony, had asked me to take photographs of Acellam and his family. I was told that Acellam needed to look relaxed and smile in the photographs. Not for the sake of journalism or art: the photos were for laminated flyers urging the remaining members of the LRA to surrender. These would be dropped over the jungle by C-130 transport aircraft. It was important for the photograph to convey Acellam being treated well and with respect.
Stiff and wary at first, his eyes bloodshot but still sharp, Acellam surveyed his surroundings as one experienced in dangerous situations would do. But there was a resignation to him. He was tired; he knew he was done. He was no longer in control of his fate. I reminded myself that I was in the presence of an evil predator. The good I hoped to accomplish with photographs required me to bury my disgust for a man who, at this moment, I needed to like me.
Acellam, I could tell, was accustomed to underlings attending to his needs. I jumped up to get him water, and I prepared what for him was exotic fare: a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He liked it. He told me he and his family had been eating “roots” in the jungle. His English was very good. He began to relax. He smiled when I asked if he liked the peanut butter. I got the pictures, and over the next few months, 565,000 laminated flyers with my photographs of a smiling, apparently happy Acellam—with quotes from him urging LRA fighters to surrender—rained down over the jungles of the Central African Republic. In the year that followed, dozens of fighters and hundreds of victims emerged, including a barefoot, one-eyed combatant in a tattered suit who surrendered in Obo, CAR, by holding the flyer with the photographs of Acellam and his family over his head. He later explained that he had fought with Kony for sixteen years.
This member of the Ugandan army was part of the brigade that captured General Caesar Acellam in May 2012. Photo: Howard G. Buffett
The photographs used in this flyer represent a disarmed Acellam. They disproved rumors of his torture and death and encouraged many victims to seek out safety and escape Kony. Courtesy of: CLRA Partners
This was one of my more unusual high-adrenaline encounters in a decade of trying to attack the causes of hunger and create more sustainable, lasting solutions. It’s been a wide-ranging journey, peppered with dangerous, even bizarre experiences. Why was a meeting with a vicious warlord part of the hunger equation? Because one of the most challenging elements in battling hunger, especially in Africa and Central America, is conflict. Individual stories of the bloodthirsty barbarism of Kony and his followers are horrifying, but two million people displaced and sixty thousand children kidnapped over the last twenty-plus years continue to live a fragile, hungry existence.
Conflict is ugly and takes a long-lasting toll on children and families. It ruins agricultural production, disrupts the shipping of food, and destroys land. It creates mass dislocation as people flee for their lives. And that is a dislocation from which there is no easy or ready recovery. It can mean months, even years, spent in a filthy, crowded camp for displaced persons. It can mean returning hom
e only to find that one’s land and home have been taken over by others who feel entitled to remain there. And as those former child soldiers escape or are released from the only life they know—uneducated, traumatized, disconnected from their families—how are they to feed themselves? They have spent their childhoods murdering on command, often high on drugs. They typically have limited skills and are often hated by their own people.
In 2005 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) said that conflict was the world’s leading cause of hunger.2 In 2007 Oxford University economist Paul Collier, writing in The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It, analyzed the states that are home to the world’s poorest people, most of them in Africa. He found that 73 percent have recently been in, or continue to be in, a civil war. But poverty and hunger exacerbated by conflict exist all around the world. I’ve seen firsthand the human toll the drug wars are taking in Central America. In some regions of Mexico, for example, families living in remote villages have been forced to convert their corn and bean crops to marijuana and are starving at the point of the drug lords’ guns.
I confess: I am personally drawn to intense, high-stakes situations such as that South Sudan jungle. I am drawn to conflict-related challenges, as they are among the hardest problems we face. I am comfortable going where other philanthropists and aid groups may not or cannot go. But this kind of adventure is not my day job.
As you’re about to learn, I’m a farmer. Mostly, I approach food insecurity—when a person is routinely unsure of when, how, or where they will access their next meal—and poverty from the perspective of a farmer who operates planters and combines and who understands soil, seeds, and fertilizer. The bulk of my battles are with weather, insects, and weeds. However, I’m committed to addressing the full picture and complexity of hunger—even the most difficult realities. And I can promise you that even in far less dramatic situations in agricultural agencies or food-security conferences or the back rooms of Washington, DC, there is a waste of resources, corruption, or unintended consequences from failed policies. These impediments and the slow pace of politics and bureaucracy are almost as maddening to me as a warlord’s sneer. We know that millions of people die of nutrition- and hunger-related causes every year, more than three million of them children.3
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