Bill Gates continues to advocate for "magic seeds" to combat global hunger. According to him, the seeds have been improved to adapt to climate change and resist agricultural pests.
Bill Gates Supports Magic Seeds
Gates supported agricultural innovation, particularly in maize and rice. African researchers made the improvement by breeding maize to be more resistant to hotter, drier climates, while rice required three fewer weeks in the field. He claimed that it could be harvested before climate change-induced heat waves cooked the crop.
According to Daily Mail, he claims that innovations will increase agricultural productivity despite climate change. However, he believes that the research and development budget for new innovations such as magic seeds is still far too small compared to food aid spending.
According to Gates in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Goalkeepers Report, it is critical to recognize that human starvation during conflicts, such as when Ukraine disrupts food supplies, is a symptom of a larger problem.
"The war in Ukraine shows that hunger can't be solved just with humanitarian assistance alone. Investments in agriculture R&D are required," Gates wrote on his LinkedIn account.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is the world's largest private foundation, best known for its work in global health. Vaccines are one of its best-known projects.
Ukraine Conflict Affects Africa's Food Supply
Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February disrupted the flow of grain from Europe to Africa, resulting in a humanitarian crisis on a second continent.
According to Gates, 14 African countries received half of their wheat from Ukraine and Russia. Now that those shipments have been canceled, the price of replacement wheat has risen to its highest level in 40 years due to the supply shock.
Prices began to fall in May, but there were the makings of a modern famine in the interim, with world leaders sounding the alarm and calling for an influx of aid money and pallets of food to be shipped to Sub-Saharan ports immediately.
Food aid has been increasing even before the Ukraine war, and it is expected to continue increasing until the end of the decade.
Africa Poverty Hunger
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DroughtTEGO
The foundation has made significant investments in agricultural technology. It contains DroughtTEGO corn seeds, which thrive at higher temperatures and drier conditions. Even in moderate drought conditions, the climate-smart variety can produce a significant grain yield.
The seeds were created as part of an African Agricultural Technology Foundation program, to which the Gates Foundation has contributed $131 million since 2008.
Farming Technology to Fight Food Supply Scarcity
Gates emphasizes the potential of predictive modeling, which involves using artificial intelligence to process crop genome sequences and environmental data to create a data-driven vision of what farms will need to look like in the future.
He said that using this computer model, researchers can determine the best plant variety for a specific location. They can also do the opposite by choosing the best location to grow a specific crop.
Although the technology is still in its early stages, similar predictive models that predict where farms might be hit by an invasive species or crop disease, for example, have already yielded significant results.
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