DfID, Gates Foundation in fight against poverty

By PATRICK GITHINJI

The Department for International Development (DfID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have announced a coordinated effort focusing on Agricultural research to reduce hunger and poverty in developing countries.

The foundation said it would support agricultural research projects to help small farmers increase their yields and incomes.

Under the partnership, DfID and the foundation will work together to identify projects that will be managed by the foundation’s Agricultural Development initiative.

The collaboration will focus on dealing with the most serious threats to food production in developing world, notably crop diseases, pests, poor soil quality and extreme weather condtions.

Eastern Kenya is among the worst hit areas by hunger. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will support agricultural research projects to help small farmers increase their yields. [PHOTO: FILE ]

It hopes to tackle these threats from multiple angles to develop long-term, sustainable solutions.

Through this new collaboration, Cornell University is receiving $40 million (£25 million) to continue with its work to develop wheat varieties that are resistant to emerging strains of stem rust disease, such as Ug99, which are spreading out of East Africa and threatening the world’s wheat supply.

Because wheat represents approximately 30 per cent of the world’s production of grain crops and nearly half of that production will be harvested in developing countries, protecting wheat supplies is critical to global food security.

Since 2008, when the Durable Rust Resistance in Wheat (DRRW) project at Cornell was first funded by the foundation, researchers have distributed new stem rust resistant wheat varieties for testing and evaluation to more than 125 sites in 40 countries.

They have strengthened rust screening nurseries in Kenya and Ethiopia and distributed nearly five tonnes of Ug99-resistant seed for planting in seven countries that are at high risk for food insecurity, including Ethiopia, Kenya, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Under Cornell’s leadership, the DRRW collaboration now involves 18 leading universities and research institutes throughout the world, as well as scientists and farmers from more than 40 countries.

A second grant of $3 million (£1.9 million) was awarded to Diagnostics for All (DFA).

DFA will develop inexpensive diagnostic tests that small farmers can use to improve the quantity and quality of milk produced by their cows and the safety of cereal grains.

Speaking via TelePresence from Britain, UK’s International Development Minister Andrew Mitchell said that many of the poorest people in Africa and Southern Asia rely on crops they grow for food, which is also an important source of income.

"It’s these people who are hit hardest by food price spikes. Working with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we can drive new ways to make direct improvements in people’s lives, whether by making disease-resistant crops more widely available so that small-scale farmers can grow and sell more, or by developing crops with added nutritional benefits that will give their families a better diet," Mitchell explained.