 foundation and I could talk about his education at Stanford but I think the maybe the more interesting thing is first of all to talk about that Jeff Rakes is somebody while he lives on the West Coast, educated in the West Coast, has never forgotten and his roots in Nebraska are deep today as they grew up. So yesterday Jeff was here with Howard Buffett and they were over there in the corner and they're chatting and I said whoa you know this I'm gonna just kind of slide up and see what they're talking about because it you know maybe some important stock chip or something I could get and and they were talking about yields per acre that they were going to get on their farms this year and how the soybeans were going to do and and or how other crops and weird things are going to be so you know I guess take the boy off the farm but you can't take the farm out of the boy and that and Jeff Rakes is comes back again and again to Nebraska and to endow wonderful institutions there and he's just told me that he's going to be starting and endowing a water for food institute at the University of Nebraska addressing what I feel is probably the most critical issue in the future of food that is water but I tell you all those things but perhaps the two most interesting things one is that he's got a certain parallel with Norman Borlaugh and Secretary Vilsack you have to forgive me for telling this but you know Norman Borlaugh started out to work at USDA and he had the job in the Forest Service and then at the last minute things happened and he went off to become a plant pathologist and change the future of the world and I guess you know a benefit but I'm you know for that he didn't go to USDA and would have had a wonderful career no doubt but and Jeff Rakes's undergraduate career was all designed for a career at USDA until one day he got his first Apple computer I think his story went and went on to be part of changing the world himself and so the incredible moment so USDA is lost though I guess was the world's game but but the final thing I want to say is usually when you introduce somebody you tell the people there about what he or she has done but I want to introduce Jeff Rakes by saying to him I think on behalf of everybody here about what you mean to the world and what the Gates Foundation does because I have seen the inspiration that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and you and all your colleagues provide whether I'm in Africa I'm around in the United States I see that what the Gates initiative and with the combination of Warren Buffett involvement and your partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation is you have energized and inspired the world to have that optimism that is now so powerful and so I want to introduce you you know how everybody feels about what you're doing and how grateful they are please join me in welcoming Jeff Rakes. Thank you very much Ambassador Quinn for your kind introduction it was especially nice of him to seat me next to to Secretary Bilsack of the USDA I didn't bring the latest copy of my resume but if things don't work out at the Gates Foundation maybe I can get a job there in the service. Ambassador Quinn mentioned my my opportunity of Microsoft and to be a part of the high-tech industry the last 30 years it was an amazing opportunity for me to be to lead the building of Microsoft Office and to work with a lot of very smart passionate people who felt that collectively we could change the world through the use of computer and software technology so I feel very blessed that I had a dream job even if it wasn't the USDA at that point in time that I had a dream job they afforded me that opportunity but I stand before you before all of you here today say that I feel that I have an even greater dream job working with all of you to change the world in ways that will help people to have the food security and their hunger needs met and so I thank all of you for what you do and I'm honored to have this opportunity today to share some thoughts related to our work it was really a special honor to be here with David Backman and Joe Locke and celebrate them as winners of the the the World Food Prize but actually all of you here and many winners of the the prize in previous years people are being recognized in a number of ways it's really an honor to be here to celebrate so many great people and so much great work inspired by Dr. Norman Borla. As was mentioned I grew up on a farm I hope I'm clicking the right button here okay there we go yeah I can talk to you too I grew up working on our family farm just a couple hundred miles west of here near a little town called Ashland Nebraska my family is still farming today in fact I will spend the weekend on our farm enjoying the hardest time and maybe a little cornhuster football you know this photo was taken in the summer of 1978 so it was right in that era of my college career where I was looking forward to to working on the USDA I do have to say I really really loved that John Deere shirt and I was really really sad when I realized that John Deere shirt no longer fit and it wasn't that the shirt is strong well when I was growing up on our farm we hosted farmers and agricultural leaders from many countries Australia France Japan several Eastern European countries and I was very impressed by their interest in learning about our approaches to see how they might be applied in their country my father would speak passionately about his belief that American agriculture could feed the world and I reflect on his vision fondly and I have to say that I know if you were alive today he'd see that the real opportunity to feed the world comes from supporting the productivity of farmers family farmers smallholder farmers everywhere in the world so one of the first things that I did when I joined the Gates Foundation a CEO was to set up a meeting with Dr. Borla I flew down to Dallas Texas and was given the the opportunity to spend some time with them I plan to ask him about his his celebrated career the exciting days in the 1940s and 1950s when he was in Mexico his thoughts on the challenges of Africa that was particularly interesting to me but he had other things on his mind actually just one other thing wheat stem rust he wanted to make sure that I knew that that disease was coming back and he wanted to know what we were going to do to stop so I think about that day quite often just how fortunate I was to spend time with him but in particular reflect on the fact that if a man who spurred the Green Revolution that fed a billion people was still vigilant well into his 90s then there's just no excuse for complacency and as today's laureates prove Dr. Borla spirit his sense of urgency and his moral commitment to small farmers pervade the entire global agricultural development community David Beckman understands that the fight against hunger and poverty lines up with the values of the American people and he has built an enormous constituency for global agricultural development right here in the United States and for almost 20 years Joe Locke has guided one of my favorite NGOs heifer international on my first Gates Foundation trip to Africa I went to okaloo a village in Kenya to visit a chilling plant that was put in place by heifer international with their partner a technical service that was a fabulous trip I loved the concept supporting smallholder dairy farmers across the value chain the chilling plant gave them a consistent mark market for their milk the predictable pricing gave them the courage to invest in better livestock and the plant provided access to artificial insemination services for that livestock technology the extension service that was centered out of the plant gave them the know-how to produce more fodder and to store it better so I loved the concept I loved the numbers in just a couple of years they were supporting more than 3,000 farmers in a 25 kilometer radius the foundation has an aspiration to scale this approach so that it helps a hundred and eighty thousand households and I'm pleased to say that we're well along the way because of the great work of heifer international on this East African dairy project so I love the numbers and I wonder about the stories behind those numbers and that's when I met David and Lucy they live in a small home a few miles from the chilling plant they farm about two to three hectares the time they own one dairy cow and they supported eight family members both sets of parents both David's parents and Lucy's parents and two daughters now and David and I were chatting he mentioned to me that he hoped to rebuild his herd to three cattle how that caught my attention rebuild what happened David explained that because of the income that the dairy chilling plant now provided to he and Lucy through the sales of their milk that he and Lucy had decided to sell two of their cow so that their oldest daughter could complete a degree in hotel management at the University of Nairobi the day that I learned it's not about the stories behind the numbers it's about the stories in front of the numbers David and Lucy's story is so powerful that in the stories that you all have to tell are so powerful because investments in small farmers have an amazing ripple effect what you do is not just about alleviating hunger and poverty it's not just about preventing stunting and wasting it is about helping people make their dreams come true it is about hundreds of millions of people who can dare to dream even bigger dreams for their children and their grandchildren now two years ago the president of the Gates Foundation Global Development Program Soviet Matthews Burwell addressed this symposium and she explained why we decided to get involved in this work like a lot of things at the Gates Foundation it's about the numbers it came down to simple mathematics three quarters of the poorest people in the world rely on farming for their food and if the goal is to help the poorest people get enough to eat and increase their incomes then the obvious way to do this is through agricultural development or as Sylvia said clearly agriculture and prosperity must grow together now we believe in that rational strongly now as we did then agricultural development has immense potential but as Dr. Borla once said you can't eat potential and I'm happy to be able to say that because of the work that you're doing we are starting to see something in addition to the potential inherent in agriculture we are starting to see the realization of that potential we are starting to see progress for small farmers yes we've been working together to take it to the farmer not everybody shares my opinion in fact plenty of people in the development sector say that we in the agricultural development community aren't showing the necessary commitment that we're not making the necessary progress some even say we're not making any progress at all so I would like to spend a little bit of time with you today providing evidence in support of my optimism now the first piece of evidence comes from our experience at the Gates Foundation when we started our agricultural development program we announced a package of six grants they totaled just over three hundred million dollars and they were designed to help more than five million poor farming families and some singer in Africa and South Asia improved their lives these grants span the agricultural value chain much like what I described in our work with heifer international and East African very project and they amount to a test case of our strategy and I invite all of you to look at the Foundation's website where we are tracking the progress of these grants two years and these grants are having a direct impact on hundreds of thousands of farm families and are in track to reach their goals and I want to give you just one example we gave a grant to the International Rice Research Institute to develop a variety of rice that can tolerate submergence so that rice farmers aren't wiped out by floods there you can see on the there you can see on the right-hand side the so-called sub one variety of rice the tolerate submergence next to the rice on the other side that you can't see because it has died underneath the water now by the end of this year more than 400,000 farmers will be planting this variety and by 2017 we project that 20 million farmers will benefit from it and that is tangible progress now the second piece of evidence is the pace of research and development in agriculture and when I talk about R and D I want to talk about high technology and low technology at the Gates Foundation we are enthusiastic about the potential of science and technology to help small farmers as Bill Gates told this audience last year we need higher yields on the same land in harsher and we will never get it without a continuous and urgent science-based search to increase productivity now most of our grants support conventional reading but in certain instances we do include biotechnology approaches because we believe they can help farmers confront drought flooding disease or pests more effectively than conventional breeding alone but we don't think high technology is the only answer some of the most promising technologies of recent years are ingenious because they are so simple my favorite example of that is a triple-layer bag for protecting from pests it was developed at Purdue University in 2007 it cost just two dollars and it can increase cowpea farmers incomes by about a hundred and fifty dollars per year that is tangible progress the third piece of evidence is the fact that investments in agriculture are going up last year the G20 nations committed 22 billion dollars to agricultural development and this year the global fund the global food security trust fund started dispersing money now of course we must remain vigilant in these tough economic times to make sure that the donors follow through on their pledges budget pressures are threatening the progress we've been making but we can say that agricultural development is back on the global agenda after a 20-year period within it which had an unfortunate drop in the commitment it is back on the global agenda a new report by the partnership to cut hunger and poverty in Africa found that US agricultural development assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa has grown significantly in recent years from just over 650 million in 2005 to now over 1.5 billion in the last year donor countries are following the example of African governments when they invest in agriculture in 2003 the African Union adopted the comprehensive Africa agriculture development program or CAA DP or what people sometimes like to call cat up cat up called on African governments to do two things dedicate 10% of their national budgets to agriculture and see 6% annual agricultural growth and now we see the 20 countries have signed cat up compacts launching solid plans to achieve these goals 10 countries have exceeded the 6% agricultural growth target that is tangible progress the fourth piece of evidence but I'd like to share with you are the macro statistics on poverty and hunger we have seen investments in agriculture have a huge impact in specific places and I like to give the example of Ghana in the last 20 years cassava production in that country has increased five full tomato production has increased six full and the cocoa sector has rebounded to become a crucial part of the economy again in that time Ghana has cut hunger by 75% of course Ghana's story is extraordinary but the global story is pretty good too since 1990 1.3 billion people worldwide have lifted themselves out of poverty that growth is taking place in China and India but also in Africa where a dozen countries are on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal on poverty reduction that is tangible progress it's a good thing that we're starting to convert agriculture's potential into better lives for small farmers it's a good thing that agricultural development is up to the task we've assigned it because the task is growing larger and more difficult in the two years since Sylvia came here to explain our strategy the work has gotten both more urgent and more complicated the economic crisis is putting enormous pressure on budgets and both donor and developing countries right at the time when we are showing a new enthusiasm about agriculture the G20 countries as I mentioned pledged 22 billion dollars that was their pledge last year for the years ahead but this year it looks unlikely that they're going to meet their pledges and we need to use our voice to get them to encourage them to meet their pledges earlier this year the global the global food security trust fund was launched right now there are 22 countries with almost one billion dollars worth of requests into the trust fund but there's only about a hundred and thirty billion dollars that is now available countries are interested in this work there are proven ways to do it now but there is a real danger that we won't get it done so this economic crisis is a big challenge climate change is a very different but also very serious challenge we've known for years that farmers were going to have to contend with harsher weather but now we're getting a clearer idea of the scale and the scope of the crisis the places that will suffer the most severe weather the volatile temperatures the changing patterns of rainfall the droughts and the floods are the same places where the poorest farmers live their very survival will depend on the ability to adapt climate change a water scarcity is of course a related problem it's already a huge issue in large parts of the world rivers in China are drying up groundwater levels in India are dropping rapidly and yet because of rapid population growth urbanization and changing diets the global demand for water is on pace to double in just 50 years now without drastic can make changes demand is going to outstrip supply in the areas where the poorest farmers live I consider this issue so urgent that I could committed a substantial portion of my time to water for food a global institute at the University of Nebraska Ambassador Quinn mentioned that and we're very fortunate that Robert Doherty the founder creator of Valmont put such a substantial portion of this fortune into creating that institute because of its potential to try and help us address these issues so if you think about those challenges where does that leave us well I want to show you a short film that I think says a lot about the direction the agricultural development community is headed it's about a project with Simit and many other partners including the Gates Foundation to help 300 million African farmers boost their maze yields in the face of recurring droughts and I think it's representative of what we're all learning and it points the way towards the future for all of us so let's take a look