40 Chances

by Howard G. Buffett

  As I went to sleep that night, a slide show played in my mind: Augusta and her fierce determination and strength. The mother offering me her child. The small graves by the side of the road. The vacant eyes of the toddlers sprawled across their mothers’ laps. The scramble by Jon and the World Vision team to try to make a difference despite the difficult odds.

  There had to be a better way to use our resources to build the underlying infrastructure of agriculture here so that it could become sustainable. Faced with dying children, it was no wonder that organizations such as World Vision and many of the world’s NGOs attack situations one project at a time. Of course, organizations divide up the challenges by region, and, of course, they respond to the most difficult situations where they feel they can demonstrate some success. The problem is that this well-intentioned approach does not change the underlying dynamics. The math still will not add up if the solutions are temporary.

  We provided some emergency support to Iuvo, but we could not put the pieces together to “save the village,” as I had hoped. And I realized that there is not enough money in all of philanthropy to “save” even half the villages in Africa like Iuvo on a project-by-project basis. Even when you’re willing to spend millions, an emergency intervention is just a temporary painkiller.

  Story 20

  A Complicated Legacy

  One of my biggest regrets is that I never got to meet Norman Borlaug. In the annals of American agriculture, or, for that matter, in almost any field, few individuals have made a greater contribution to the world.

  In the early 1940s Mexico was grappling with a plant disease called stem rust that was decimating wheat crops. In 1940 vice president–elect Henry Wallace, who had been President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of agriculture (and a cofounder of what became Pioneer Hi-Bred Seed Company), visited Mexico, in part to spread goodwill as world tensions were increasing. He saw the widespread troubles of farmers, and he saw the resulting poverty and hunger that the wheat crop failures had caused. When Wallace returned to Washington, he lobbied the Rockefeller Foundation to agree to send a scientific team to Mexico.

  Stem rust weakens the stalk section of a wheat plant. The plants break and fall over, ruining the development of the grains at the top. Through a series of clever breeding experiments, a member of the team, Dr. Norman Borlaug, developed shorter-stalked wheat strains that were incredibly robust, high yield, disease resistant, and transportable—meaning that they could be grown equally well in different geographic regions. It took some years to work, but the accomplishment was enormous. Mexican wheat farmers’ yields increased and set the stage for a vibrant wheat-growing industry in Mexico.

  Borlaug’s wheat strains proved vital and productive in other areas of the world as well. As the 1960s dawned, agricultural output in the developing world was not keeping pace with booming populations. Two devastating droughts in Asia killed millions, and the United States shipped massive amounts of wheat to India to keep hundreds of millions fed. But even as US government officials struggled to try to help Asia with aid, they encouraged government ministers in India, Pakistan, and other parts of the continent to consider Borlaug’s hardy wheat developed in Mexico’s Yaquí Valley.

  Borlaug himself taught farmers in India and Pakistan how to maximize yields. He used demonstration plots to show poor Indian farmers that his new approach using the special hybrid seeds and fertilizer could produce five times more grain on the same amount of land than using traditional seeds and old methods. Borlaug also lobbied on behalf of the tools that farmers needed—such as seed and fertilizer—and also the credit they would need to buy the first two. Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi later even famously ripped up a flower bed and planted Borlaug’s wheat. Aid came in from all over the world to help supply the needed seeds and fertilizer.

  India’s wheat harvest exploded. By the mid-1970s, the country was growing enough grain to build vast national reserves. In addition to pushing back the food shortages, this Green Revolution, as it came to be known, improved the quality of life more broadly because farmers now had extra crops to sell for money to pay for education, medicine, and other benefits. The Rockefeller Foundation and others supported research similar to Borlaug’s to raise yields for rice, and, combined with wheat, many millions more in Asian countries were saved from starvation.

  Dr. Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970. I have read a lot about him and his work, and I’ve spent time with his granddaughter Julie, who works at the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture at Texas A&M University. Dr. Borlaug was not an aloof scientist: he was out in the field every day, sleeves rolled up. He knew how to talk to farmers, in part, I’m sure, because he had grown up on a farm in Iowa. His personal commitment to the work, his understanding of the variables that matter in farming, and his larger appreciation of the political and socioeconomic factors that impact agriculture all added to his credibility and success. In the spirit of forty chances, it seems to me that he always learned lessons from previous harvests and refined and adjusted his approaches.

  And yet the Green Revolution’s legacy is complicated. The approach Dr. Borlaug pioneered involved using hybrid seeds and nitrogen-based fertilizer to dramatically improve yields of a single crop. As a solution to address acute hunger in India and Pakistan, it was brilliant. Focusing on one recipe for growing one crop, so-called monocropping, made it simpler and more efficient to produce, harvest, store, and distribute the wheat. However, I am frustrated when I hear the term “Green Revolution” tossed around like a surefire method for increasing all crop yields anywhere and everywhere. There is an assumption by some that we’ve already figured out this high-yield approach, and now if only we could find the money and cooperation from governments, we could make it happen wherever we need it. That is not true. There is never a single solution for permanently maximizing yields, even on farms in the developed world, or, for that matter, even for a single farm in the United States.I

  A GREAT CONTRIBUTION BUT NOT A “SOLUTION”

  In areas of the world experiencing extreme food insecurity today—particularly across the African continent but also in parts of Central America—critical Green Revolution conditions don’t exist. The soils of Africa are some of the most weathered, abused, and challenging to farm on the planet. Many lack nutrients, some are so sandy that water drains right through them, and others are so heavy with clay that plant roots can barely penetrate. Africa’s agriculture is largely rain fed, and droughts are common. Regions where subsistence farmers struggle to stay alive often lack roads and railroads, so it is difficult to transport seeds and fertilizer to where they are most needed. Tribal legacies control landownership, and fifty-four different governments have widely varying commitments to helping their own people. African farmers are vulnerable to plant diseases and pest infestations—therefore, monoculture puts their food security at even more risk. Traditionally, farmers have raised multiple crops so that the likelihood of all failing in one season is lower.

  Finally, there are socioeconomic and infrastructure factors. India had already made a commitment to agriculture by the time Borlaug and the Green Revolution arrived. Agricultural extension existed throughout the country. The central Indian government could handle large-scale purchasing and negotiate with foreign governments for aid, and it could utilize the military to protect certain assets and equipment and move seed and fertilizer. Unlike the colonialists in Africa, who built railroads primarily to mines, colonialists in India built railways to agricultural areas, initially to facilitate cotton exports. That proved invaluable.

  In the decades since the Green Revolution saved a billion people from acute hunger, it has also become clear that hybrid seeds and fertilizer did not solve hunger in India, and there was some environmental fallout. Today India has one of the highest rates of childhood malnutrition in the world, higher than those of many African countries. UNICEF calculated in 2009 that 48 percent of all children in India under five years old suffered moderate to se
vere stunting.1

  And in terms of the environment, overuse of nitrogen in some areas has polluted water tables and degraded soils, causing yields to fall. One problem is that nitrogen fertilizer supercharges the growth of various crops but does not replenish organic matter or replace other essential nutrients needed for productive soil. Merely fertilizing is like giving a sick man oxygen and caffeine, but not food. You can speed up his metabolism, make him more alert—even make him more energetic for a short time—but at some point, he will collapse from the lack of calories needed to retain body mass and fuel the brain and other basic functions. India’s wheat yields increased for many years, but recently, many are concerned that as much as half the country’s soil is degraded from overfertilizing.2

  “WAIT, IT GETS WORSE!”

  In early 2012 I took a trip to the Yaquí Valley in Mexico, where Norman Borlaug developed those hardy wheat strains. I spent a day at the headquarters of CIMMYT with the scientists who have continued his research. CIMMYT stands for the Centro Internacional de Mejoramiento de Maíz y Trigo, or the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. The nonprofit research and training center, which focuses on helping improve yields of these crops around the globe, has one of the world’s largest research programs on wheat, and it is estimated that 75 percent of the wheat varieties grown in the developing world have their origins in the fields of the Yaquí Valley or come from CIMMYT research partners. Dr. Borlaug is a hero here: a giant portrait of him is painted on the side of a wall in front of the headquarters in Ciudad Obregón, and inside are photographs taken during his visit there shortly before he died in 2009.

  We went out to the fields to discuss some of the techniques that CIMMYT is developing to try to increase yields and grow wheat efficiently and more sustainably. My hosts pointed out that we were standing just a few hundred meters from the original plots Norman Borlaug farmed in the 1940s, but they also talked about how one of Dr. Borlaug’s last efforts was to encourage farmers to cut back on what had become excessive fertilizer use.

  As we arrive at the CIMMYT Research Station, there is a large sign honoring Dr. Norman Borlaug. Photo: Howard G. Buffett

  According to these researchers, the private farmers in the Yaquí Valley took to heart Dr. Borlaug’s original findings that fertilizer was key to increasing yields. And the federal government helps farmers by subsidizing fertilizer and seeds. But a problematic situation has developed. Local wheat farmers have been overapplying and misapplying fertilizer to a staggering degree. The CIMMYT scientists explained to me that the efficiency rate of the nitrogen fertilizer being applied locally was about 31 percent, meaning that more than two-thirds of the applied fertilizer was not being taken up in the plants. Nitrogen uptake can vary based on a number of weather and soil conditions, but by way of comparison, in a typical year on my farms in Illinois, using a good nutrient management plan, we will usually get roughly two-thirds of the nitrogen taken up by the plant, and sometimes significantly more than that.

  The CIMMYT scientists also explained the technique used by local farmers. First, they would apply the nitrogen in dry form; next, they would irrigate; and then they would plant. My reaction to that sequence was similar to what I imagine a dentist’s would be upon hearing that a patient’s nightly routine was to brush his teeth, suck on a sugary jawbreakers candy for an hour, and then go to bed. The order matters in farming! Applying all of the nitrogen before irrigation (in this part of the world, primarily flood irrigation, or what’s called furrow irrigation), washes away much of the nitrogen from the planting beds themselves and drives it deeper into the soil or off the fields. It can’t do much there but accumulate or make its way to the water table. The way that many US farmers fertilize is to use planters that drop fertilizer alongside the seed to make sure the seed directly benefits and the least amount is lost. These Mexican farmers used a technique guaranteeing that most of their fertilizer would be transported by the water away from the plants and their field.

  Furrow irrigation can wash nutrients through the field and away from the plants, as seen happening here in Guatemala. Photo: Howard G. Buffett

  “That nitrogen management is what I would call disastrous,” I said out loud.

  “Wait, it gets worse!” said a senior scientist from CIMMYT.

  You’ve heard the joke by some doctors and nutritionists about how the only thing that people who take enormous amounts of vitamins accomplish is to produce expensive urine. To extend that analogy one more step, these farmers’ nitrogen management approach is like peeing that expensive urine back into your own freshwater supply. Local wells around Obregón that have been tested (and most are not tested routinely) show that at least 25 percent of them are contaminated with more than ten times the maximum levels of nitrogen considered safe in drinking water. The CIMMYT scientists showed me a slide depicting another environmental impact of this situation: it’s a satellite photograph of the Sea of Cortez, between the western shore of mainland Mexico and the Baja Peninsula, after planting season. So much nitrogen has migrated to the sea-bound water that a dramatic algae bloom is visible. A similar bloom occurs in the Gulf of Mexico, as a result of the Mississippi River washing a layer of freshwater above the salt water, with the nitrogen from runoff sparking a growth in anaerobic bacteria, which can damage native aquatic life.

  CIMMYT attempted a project to try to persuade the farmers to use less nitrogen. As an experiment, the center took one acre and stopped fertilizing it for a season. The yield was essentially equal to that of the year before, due to the nitrogen still in the soil from previous years. That impressed some local farmers: fertilizer costs money, after all, and an equal yield without investing in it is money in the farmers’ pockets. So CIMMYT went further and convinced a local farmer to run the same experiment on eighty acres. At first the farmer said yes. Then he called with second thoughts. It seemed that the local farming association offered its members a credit toward free fertilizer, and the farmer was told that if he didn’t use the credit this year, he would lose it. CIMMYT intervened, explaining that it was conducting a one-season experiment, and the association agreed to make an exception.

  Then the farmer called back again and said, “Look, I have a partner on the eighty acres who owns forty of them, and he’s nervous about not fertilizing. He’s going to fertilize his acres right next to the others, and I won’t, and we’ll see what happens.” The yields were equal. The cost of the fertilizer reduced the partner’s profits.

  So here in the cradle of the Green Revolution, farmers grapple with this negative fallout from its approach. None of this was lost on Dr. Borlaug. A few months before he died, he visited the Yaquí Valley and implored local farmers to cut back on their fertilizer usage.

  The good news is that researchers are working on solutions to these issues. For example, CIMMYT is trying to get farmers to use a technology for secondary fertilizer applications that is aimed at reducing total nitrogen applied in a field. GreenSeeker, developed at Oklahoma State University, falls into the category of brilliantly simple. Basically, when a plant is deficient in nitrogen, it turns yellow, or less green. By attaching the sensor to an applicator, a farmer can calibrate the amount of nitrogen fertilizer delivered to corn, for example, based on how green the leaves are. Another, less mechanized version of the technology for farmers with smaller operations allows them to make some of the same measurements and calculations with a handheld device. CIMMYT’s educational outreach program is a forty chances moment for these farmers, and I hope they take advantage of it.

  BORLAUG IN AFRICA

  Dr. Borlaug never stopped working on hunger. Later in his life, he tried to adapt his original methods for Africa. In the 1980s the Japanese philanthropist Ryoichi Sasakawa hired Dr. Borlaug to spearhead an effort to bring Green Revolution approaches to Ghana, Sudan, and other African countries, and Dr. Borlaug worked to try to do that for two decades. He had some successes in more developed areas, but in 2006 Dr. Borlaug gave a talk in which he explained some of
the difficulties of working in Africa—from malaria to lack of transportation infrastructure—that were significant impediments to progress. He said that Africa would need the equivalent of a Marshall Plan—the expansive US aid program to rebuild Europe in the aftermath of World War II—for development across huge swaths of the continent to make sustainable progress.3

  As you look more broadly at the many countries of Africa where agriculture is difficult and people are hungry and inject both internal and cross-border conflict and corruption into the mix, to me the conclusion is clear: we need major initiatives in agriculture, but they need to be designed around simple, basic technologies and inputs for subsistence farmers, not large-scale farms. Generally, monocropping is not a good idea because it makes subsistence farmers vulnerable to a species-specific disease or pests. We should work on improving their access to appropriate equipment, higher-yielding seeds, and storage facilities, because those elements will help them to increase yields and better benefit from selling their surplus crops into markets—the only sustainable path out of abject poverty and hunger.

  We can teach farmers soil management techniques that retain organic matter and build soil health. I call the emphasis on soil the Brown Revolution approach. Today our Ukulima Farm in South Africa and our farms in Arizona are testing a number of exciting new farming techniques and technologies that hold the promise of helping the people who need them most. They are low input, designed for local capabilities and geography, and more realistic. Much as Dr. Borlaug’s Green Revolution helped Mexico and then reversed the tide on a horrible famine, a new Brown Revolution can carry his legacy forward with even broader impact.