Biotech Updates

FAO Director and Bill Gates Meet to Discuss Agricultural Development Plans

May 15, 2009

Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and Bill Gates,  co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, met in Rome earlier this week to discuss the role of agricultural development in reducing world hunger and poverty. FAO acknowledges the role that agriculture will play in providing food for an additional three billion people who will be living on our planet by 2050. Gates and Diouf also discussed the longer-term challenges to agriculture, including the impact of the global economic crisis on poor countries.

The Gates Foundation, the world's largest private foundation, has launched a program in agricultural development in 2006 in order to help small farmers overcome hunger and poverty. The Foundation has granted FAO some USD 5.6 million to push agricultural development in 17 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. FAO collaborates with several institutions as part of the implementation of grants to the Africa-based Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in its work with small farmers and with the Cornell University for the development of rust-resistant wheat varieties.

For more information, visit http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/19516/icode/