Story 211/2
Owners Make Better Farmers
On a recent visit to California’s San Joaquin Valley, I had dinner with an innovative farmer who owns a significant operation there. He uses drip irrigation extensively, has progressive labor policies, and contributes a large amount of fresh food to a local food bank. We were having a great conversation trading stories about technology and other ideas, but then he said something that surprised me about farming in the Midwest.
“Around here, we’re used to sharing information on what works, how to do it better. But we own our own land. I was talking to a friend who farms in the Midwest, and he was saying how contract farmers there are becoming so competitive, they are secretive. They are trying to show better yields than their neighbors so they can get the lease rights from the farm management companies.”
Contract farmers? That’s not a term you often hear in my part of the country. I have many friends who farm land that is a combination of land they own and land they rent, and it would never occur to me to call them “contract farmers.” But the more I thought about it, I had to admit that my California friend was onto something. As farm consolidation has accelerated in farms across the Midwest, more and more farmland is leased to farmers from absentee owners, including large farm management companies. The leases may be for only a few years; then they are put up to competitive bids, and so there is a more aggressive, short-term focus as a result.
Farm operations have grown in size because more land is rented to fewer operators. The challenge of this changing dynamic is keeping resource management a priority for farmers who mine the soil to make a profit. Photo: Howard G. Buffett
The idea of secretive, competitive farmers bothers me. It goes against everything I like about farming, and it goes against the reason a bulldozer-driving kid like me who didn’t know a disk from a disco was able to learn the business from some generous guys. But, I had to admit, not only is this trend changing the social dynamics somewhat; it has serious consequences for the soil. To win contracts to secure the land they want to farm, farmers need to prove only their ability to maximize short-term production. They don’t need to demonstrate an intention to take care of the soil. Your attitude toward the long-term health of the soil is influenced by whether or not you own your land.
One irony of this conversation is that for years I have been talking about the importance of farmers owning their own land in the developing world. Talk about easier said than done. Land is a legal construction, and the right to control a particular section of the Earth has been the cause of wars, jealousy, and bitter wrangling since humans stopped hunting and gathering and put down roots. But everywhere in the world, farmers who own their own land take better care of the soil than those who do not. In any place where we are asked to invest resources these days, one of the first questions we ask is, “What is the land tenure situation? Are farmers connected to and incented to work and improve their land, or do they feel vulnerable and subject to being booted off their land?” One of Ethiopia’s challenges, for example, is that the government owns all the land.
I wrote earlier about the frustration of Angola’s farmers with the uncertain and uneven treatment of land titling in their country, but that country is not unusual. This comes up over and over all across Africa and Central America. You can make the case that the development of America’s incredibly productive agricultural system came about in part because of our rules of private landownership. It began early in our country’s history. Farmers here could always see a clear, long-term benefit for themselves and their offspring from taking care of their land and investing in and supporting the agricultural infrastructure of their communities: roads, electricity, storage capacity, equipment.
We have tried to support a variety of land tenure programs around the world, with the most successful efforts so far in Nicaragua. That’s a satisfying example of progress we’ll talk about in part 5. The land tenure situation in most African countries is less than ideal, and tribal customs and practices, which can hold even more sway in land management than national laws do, complicate matters.
One major challenge with land reform is that unwinding traditional practices or customs—or trying to return land to those who have been dispossessed of it by internal or external conflict—is not only difficult but also dangerous at times. Territorial disputes have led to violence and wars throughout history. And reform is complicated. Mexico has been struggling with land reform issues since the Mexican Revolution of the early twentieth century; for example, there are legal avenues for communal land parcels for agriculture to be distributed to individual farmers so they can hold title, buy or sell land, and use it as collateral for credit. Yet what should be a useful tool has hit barriers within the communities themselves. It can be difficult to figure out how to divide lands of uneven quality into individual parcels. But if individuals don’t hold title, they don’t have collateral for loans that could help them invest in equipment and inputs to help them farm more productively. Instead, the community rents out the land. But here we go again: farmers who rent land don’t make long-term investments in soil.
A growing issue in Africa is that governments are auctioning off rights to foreign interests to farm large tracts of what good agricultural land there is, often through ninety-nine-year leases. It is so troubling to me to see land in Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Liberia being promoted as a prime investment opportunity for hedge funds and investors, when I have been to those countries and seen their desperate poverty and hunger. Millions of people there remain dependent on food aid, yet their governments are offering cheap deals to foreign investors and countries to farm that land and ship the food back to their home countries or sell it on the global market. The local people rarely benefit. In fact, the local people can be hurt by market distortions created by these deals. The investors try to suggest that the jobs created by developing the land will lift the entire economy. I am among those skeptics who point out that these outside developers tell governments they will employ thousands of people, but the prospectuses brag to investors that they intend to bring in high-tech farming that is much less labor dependent than other methods. Which is it?
Proponents of these land deals, investors and government officials alike, sometimes suggest that they are mainly leasing off “unused” land. Give me a break: investors buy or invest in the best assets, not the worst. Africa has been a net importer of agricultural products for decades.1 I feel these countries should focus on helping their own people become better, more productive farmers. They should use that land themselves and increase yields in a sustainable way to feed their own people. What’s more, in some cases, the land grabs are aimed at land currently used by pastoralists who raise cattle or other livestock and who need the corridors to remain open and producing natural grasses.
Anyone who believes that savvy investors are going to accept the worst land and stand behind others in line for critical water resources is naïve or delusional. When you have starving people, there is no “good” land that goes unused. Government leaders must come to value connecting their own country’s agriculture to their own farmers’ ownership of their own land. These decisions will shape the future of hunger in these countries.
There is a creative young Midwest farmer HWB will tell you about later who has an angle on trying to inspire more sustainable farming practices, even among farmers who rent or lease their land. But it’s a little ironic that going to California reminded me not to ignore a trend happening in my own part of the country. Wherever they live and no matter how big or small they are, farmers take better care of land if they own it.
Story 22
Disconnects
When our foundation was focused on habitat and species preservation in the late 1990s, I had the idea to build a facility in South Africa to create a protected habitat for research on cheetahs. The long-legged, spotted cats have always fascinated me. Acinonyx jubatus is the Latin name for the African cheetah, the fastest land animal on
earth. Cheetahs can go from zero to over sixty miles per hour in three seconds and can top seventy-five miles per hour in short bursts. They are considered a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), in part because in the wild, adult cheetahs are fast but not well equipped to fight off attacks from lions and hyenas, so their cubs are vulnerable. Poachers prey on cheetahs, and some ranchers will shoot cheetahs on sight. Meanwhile, the animals are difficult to breed in captivity. We wanted to better understand them in hopes of prolonging their survival.
We purchased fourteen pieces of property and assembled them into the Jubatus reserve, partnering with one of South Africa’s most eminent cheetah experts, Ann van Dyk. We hired all local staff. And from almost the moment we arrived, and right up to our decision to sell the facility a decade later, it was the most intense crash course in cultural disconnects I have ever experienced. The lessons were invaluable. But I grew to hate the taste of humble pie.
Our early investments in cheetah conservation led me to understanding important cultural issues for our later investments. Photo: Howard G. Buffett
The culture shock began early in our work there. While we were negotiating to buy Jubatus, we realized that four families had been living on the land. They were essentially squatters. Under South African law, they could live there, but they had no rights to the land. Since our cheetahs were going to be free-ranging, even if we put a fence around their existing homes, we were concerned that having people that close to the animals could be dangerous. We wanted to be generous, so we asked our attorney to go through all the official channels to find these families new land parcels equal to or better than what they had. We took on the cost of moving them and compensating them for the disruption. We worked with both the government and the tribal chief. The families were willing—in fact, happy—to move.
Going the formal route took two years, and I was excited to attend a meeting where we planned to sign off on the deal. A staff member of our attorney’s team, who spoke the language, was there to help us. Normally, he was very even-tempered, but he suddenly got a very angry look on his face. I started to ask what was going on, and he barked, “Not now, Howard!”
He got up and motioned for me to join him in leaving. As soon as we were beyond hearing range, he apologized for snapping but said he had wanted the group to realize that it had pushed us too far. Despite all the approvals and the considerable money we’d spent already, a local witch doctor had suddenly taken an interest in the move. He told the families they must not move. Our negotiator said he was sure this could be overcome with a few more months and more money—and that was exactly what happened. The insurmountable obstacles went away after the witch doctor got his cut.
The unpredictable intentions and involvement of figures such as witch doctors across Africa is a reality that even Africans call “TIA”: “This is Africa.” It is a common expression on the continent, often accompanied by a shrug or a wink. But there are many other variations of TIA that undermine development efforts by outside organizations. Finger-pointing is not my intention here; rather, my point is that parachuting into any foreign situation with the confidence that your way is the right way, or that your world-view is ideal, is doomed to fail. People in Africa (and everywhere else for that matter) have survived all manner of difficult situations for a long time, and many of their customs, habits, and outlooks are hardwired. I want to try to convey just how pervasive, as well as subtle, some of the TIAs can be.
The involvement of spirits, sorcery, and superstition in decisions about land or the timing of activities is not uncommon at all in Africa, and witch doctors can exert tremendous power to banish individuals or shape a tribal chief’s decisions. A less obvious form of TIA can involve local people’s sense of time and planning. At Jubatus, we had constant setbacks created by not planning ahead. Projects either took much longer to complete than they should have taken, or they just fell apart because different elements were executed out of order. I would upgrade or construct certain physical facilities, with the assumption that the research staff would be prepared to start using them immediately—and then I would learn they were not prepared. Despite having agreed on a plan, they would later admit they didn’t think it would actually happen, so they waited before doing their part. We were trying to set up a research facility, which involved taking measurements and keeping track of different variables, such as changes in the animals’ diets or movements. Often workers would not adjust the animals’ diets at the right time or on the right day, or would be inconsistent in how they applied instruction. For a long time, I just could not understand this.
Witch doctors, like this one I photographed in Mozambique, can have a lot of influence over local decision making. Photo: Howard G. Buffett
One day I was driving down a local road called the Diepdrift. It’s a decent road, and thanks to some private fenced game preserves, you can spot giraffe heads poking up among the acacia treetops or encounter a warthog family shooting across with their funny squat bodies and tails twitching. (African warthogs have never met a fence they can’t dig under or bust through.) One day I saw that a Jubatus employee had a flat tire. I stopped to help and realized he did not have a spare. Now, this man was a hard worker and very competent. I told him I would drive him to the nearest store so he could buy a patch to fix the tire. He agreed. We got to the store about six miles up the road. He went in and found a patch kit. He then came out and asked if I could drive him back to his car so he could get his wallet and then come back to pay for the patch. I asked, mystified, “Why didn’t you bring your wallet?” He replied, “I didn’t need it when we left. Now I need it.”
I think it is almost unthinkable to Americans not to plan ahead, or organize our days around some kind of schedule, or approach the future as a series of activities that flow logically from one to the next. Sometimes that is not the case in other cultures. In regions where development efforts are under way, many local people spend very little time coordinating their activities or complying with a shared schedule. I saw a hint of this disconnect in the 2006 documentary film God Grew Tired of Us, about the “Lost Boys of Sudan.” During the Sudanese civil war from 1983 to 2005, an estimated twenty thousand Sudanese boys were orphaned or separated from their families by the conflict. They banded together in huge groups and walked hundreds of miles for years, looking for refuge in camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. Many died, and some are still in camps, but eventually more than three thousand of them were relocated to the United States.
In one scene in the film, a man charged with helping three young Sudanese men settle into an apartment in Pittsburgh shows them a clock radio and how it works. It is obvious that they are not familiar with clocks or the importance of being somewhere at a specific time. And why would they be? They had lived in a camp for displaced persons for years and lived meal to meal and moment to moment for much of their lives. “They have a saying in America that time is money,” the man explains to the boys, who seem confused.
Our assumptions are often not valid in other parts of the world. In South Africa, where kids get a ride to school or employees come to work by donkey, people have a different perspective of time. Photo: Howard G. Buffett
“CREATING TIME”
A South African woman who has worked for me at our Ukulima farm for years has tried to explain to me the traditional view of time in Africa. “Africans don’t see themselves as part of a larger flow of time,” she said. “They see themselves almost creating time when they go off alone. They are very focused on the present moment; the future is very abstract. This is hard to understand for people who are not from Africa.” That was true for me. I would get so frustrated when a project would stall or be undermined because employees did not anticipate or plan for the next job or activity. To them, “now” could be next week.
Over time I learned that in South Africa when you want something done right away, the correct term is “now-now!” You have to work with local managers who understand some
of these possible disconnects, and they communicate the tasks to the workers in a style that uses a local sense of time and connections. Sometimes it is as easy as just finding a particular word in their language or a social convention that carries a nuance we lack. This is true in situations other than time and planning, such as in paying workers: we found that it caused serious upheaval to try to create incentive pay for the best work. Two workers with the same title had to be paid the same, or one would revolt. We finally learned that the answer was to give the higher performer a different job title, and the problem would go away.
We learned the hard way that we had to ask local people to help us set up management structures, but even more than that, we had to learn not to assume that our own lifestyle preferences applied to employees. We had some employees living at Jubatus, and we decided to build them a new house. Again, we wanted them to be comfortable. We purchased appliances for the home and figured that would make them happy. Not long after it was finished, and they moved in, I was driving by and noticed the brand-new stove sitting in the front yard. I figured it must have broken, so I stopped to see what had happened. I learned that the family had removed the stove and then created a fire pit in the middle of the kitchen floor. Nobody ever asked them if they wanted a stove. The women had always cooked in an open fire pit. They had no use for the stove.
My final TIA story took place on the Koevoet Road that runs along one side of our former Jubatus property, perpendicular to Diepdrift Road. A group of people referred to as the Koevoets were living across the road from us. Neighbors in the region told me that many of the men in this community were mercenaries in Angola and had also worked for the South African police as crowd controllers during apartheid. The South African government had established the settlement, but at the time we were there, the Koevoets were not popular with the locals.
40 Chances Page 18