Bill Gates Dotting His i’s, Crossing His Peas

Bill Gates is a Boy Wonder to me; I wonder what he was doing in 1973 outside school in Harvard – studying law? (He dropped out.) I don’t know him from Adam Smith, but I know he’s a Word Wizard, known that for years, beginning with his alpha Word 1 circa 1987. His Word 4 was a pain in the ass – you sit long hours to come up with a manuscript worth perusing; his Word 5 was the beginning of a paradigm shift that the world sat up and took notice of; his Word 2003 is genius I now recognize and love to the max; it’s his Word 2007 I have a problem with, a complete stranger to me and, you know, I don’t talk to strangers.

William Henry Gates, I presume? Photo by Domain Barnyard

Oh, but Bill Gates is talking to strangers now. He has of course been traveling the information superhighway and, as of last report, he was last seen in Africa this September, and in two different places at the same time! South Africa and Tanzania. That’s the wonder of the Internet, right?

Bill Gates in Africa

2007. Actually, what people saw September in Africa was Bill Gates in spirit, in truth but not in fact. He was with Melinda. You see, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding the project Tropical Legumes in a dual-prong arrangement, Prong 1 launched in Rustenburg Kloof in South Africa and Prong 2 launched in Arusha in Tanzania. I don’t know if simultaneously, in virtual time.

Focused on Sub-Saharan Africa, Prong 1 is being implemented by the Generation Challenge Program (GCP) of the Consultative Group on Agricultural Research (CGIAR), with national research programs, universities and CGIAR centres collaborating, in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Senegal and Zimbabwe. Prong 2 is being implemented by ICRISAT based in Andhra Pradesh in India, the Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) based in Cali in Colombia, and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) based in Ibadan in Nigeria; conducted in 8 countries of Sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Mali, Niger and Nigeria), and two countries of South Asia (India and Myanmar). The challenge is the generation of advantaged seeds for the disadvantaged farmers with their disadvantaged soils.

The whole project partners with the Program for African Seed Systems, a major initiative within the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, to ensure African farmers have access to improved seeds. Seeds do not a farmer make, but with good quality and a little more help, he stands a good chance.

1975. Tropical Legumes is a revolution. This is what I know: Revolutions are not brought about by single individuals but by teams, including the Information Revolution. In the case of the software, the revolution was largely brought about by the Disk Operating System (DOS), the team was Bill Gates, Paul Allen & Microsoft (1975). In the case of the PC, the revolution was largely brought about by Apple I; the team was Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak & Apple Computer (1976). The Information Revolution was started by Microsoft (software) and Apple (hardware). Strange bedfellows those, but we owe them awe.

1995. Bill Gates writes ‘A Revolution Begins,’ Chapter 1 of the book The Road Ahead (New York: Viking Penguin). He is not new to revolutions, being one of the rebels who helped give birth to personal computing, which a little later gave birth to the personal computer (PC). He wants a PC in every home, as in ‘a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage’ (a promise by US candidate President Herbert Hoover in 1928). He is not new to competition, neither to collaboration. Bill Gates wrote The Road Ahead with Nathan Myhrvold & Peter Rinearson.

2000. In 2000, he and wife set up the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with a ‘real awareness of the awful inequalities in the world – the appalling disparities of health and wealth and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of poverty, disease and despair’ (gatesfoundation.org). Microsoft Windows changes version every few years; the poor we have always with us?

William is German for will, determined, resolute. Melinda is a blend of two names, Melissa and Linda; Melissa is Greek for honey; Linda is Spanish for pretty (thinkbabynames.com). Their foundation reflects their best: a common will and beauty of soul.

Their foundation operates on 2 values. One, All lives – no matter where they are being led – have equal value. (That’s logical.) Two, To whom much is given, much is expected. (That’s Biblical – Luke 12: 48.)

2007. Bill Gates is traveling the information highway and easing himself into what William Dar refers to as ‘the next Green Revolution’ (inaugural address, Prong 2 launch), another revolution, a grey-to-green (g2g) revolution, this time not high tech but biotech, turning the grey areas (drought-prone, poor soils) into green areas (soils rich in nutrients, fields covered by legumes and diverse other crops).

2007. Bill Gates recites those 2 values in his 2007 June 07 Harvard commencement speech accepting a degree (Doctor of Laws, honoris causa) from his alma mater (June 8, Robert A Guth, online.wsj.com). 32 years earlier, he had dropped out of college. Harvard’s Crimson calls him ‘Harvard’s most successful dropout’ – it shows the world you don’t need a college degree to become the world’s richest man, or second richest.

He’s so smart he’s so rich! How did that happen? It’s complicated. But he volunteers: For any complicated problem, Bill Gates told the graduates they had to use a 4-point plan to attack it:

(1) determine a goal;
(2) find the ‘highest-leverage approach;’
(3) discover the ideal technology for that approach;
(4) in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology you already have.

His advice to the graduates was for ‘each to take on an issue’ and ‘become a specialist on it’ even if he devotes to it just a few hours every week. It just happens I know that. While a specialist is not always a hit website, a hit website is always a specialist. That’s good advice for writers too. Me, I specialize on the subject at hand, studying often with the Internet, sometimes a book, sometimes a magazine – always, a wild imagination.

Bill Gates says:

What I remember most above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging.

Studying in the University of the Philippines is like that. Exhilarating because your mind tells your body to pump more adrenalin. Intimidating when you think you don’t have all the answers and you think the other side has all the questions. I got myself much discouraged – in one semester, I flunked my subjects and later almost flunked life’s course called Mens Sana. It’s difficult to live with yourself if you’re difficult. My advice: The never-ending challenge is to continuously cultivate a creative mind.

But humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.

What Bill Gates is saying is wisdom that not every rich man reaches anytime in his life. He is 53; he was born 1955 October 28. (Advanced Happy birthday! Bill.) What he’s declaring to be true is simple enough: Reducing inequity is the highest human achievement. The poor should not always be with us.

Peas in Bill Gates’ Menu

I note that, with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s approval, the press release on the launching of the project Tropical Legumes titled ‘Legumes step into the limelight in the tropics’ is unusual not only because of the mixed metaphor (limelight and sunlight, suggested by ‘tropics’), but more so because of the power of the double metaphor in the last sentence … ‘legumes deserve a second look and a leap in faith.’

The double metaphor, referring to the promises of the project of balanced diets, higher incomes, high returns on investment, is saying: It must start with the first step, which is to decide to take the risk, followed by a leap of faith.

On my part, I see that this is the beginning of a great project in research for development in Africa, the beginning of a reality-based model to emulate in the semi-arid tropics of Asia, Australia, Latin America.

This is how Tropical Legumes is designed to work: Prong 1 conducts the trial plantings of 4 legumes: beans, cowpea, groundnut, chickpea. The research results are then passed on to Prong 2 as basis for large-scale breeding, seed multiplication and distribution to small farmers of new, improved varieties. In addition, Prong 2 works on soybeans and pigeon pea. In breeding, you cross beans to beans, peas to peas. Now, that’s Bill Gates crossing his peas.

The Tropical Legumes project is for increasing incomes, improving soil fertility; it calls for investments in the value chain; and it has iCRISAT. Now, that’s Bill Gates dotting his i’s. ICRISAT adds a big value in there, being one of (if not) the most prestigious, most innovative, most organized of the 15 centers of R4D excellence of the CGIAR. This is all the more remarkable in that within the span of 7 years, starting in 2000 when William Dar became its Director General, ICRISAT rose from lost to first among equals. This year, 2007, ICRISAT was rated O (Outstanding) by the World Bank. William Dar is Filipino; when the Filipino is good, he is the best.

According to CLL Gowda, Prong 2 Project Leader, Prong 2 is designed so that farmers take part in selecting off-the-shelf legume varieties, test-plant them, and produce the quality seeds for the next planting. The project being R4D, research for development, the beans, cowpea, groundnut, chickpea, soybeans, pigeon pea, are the entry points, not the exit points. There is only one exit point: poverty reduction. Or, as Bill Gates puts it, reduction of inequity.

From the press release:

The (Bill & Melinda Gates) Foundation is dedicated to a sustainable model of agricultural development that empowers small farmers, engages rural communities and improves agricultural productivity while reducing inequity and protecting natural resources.

Farmers must be enabled to help themselves rise from deprivation; natural resources must be used, not abused; for themselves, villagers must work out together a society where there are no poor.

Denis Mwashita, a small farmer in Bingagaru, Zimbabwe says, ‘Beans have always carried disease, but from the little we harvest and eat, we and our children have developed the stomach.’ He will soon realize that the Tropical Legumes project will give him disease-resistant, not disease-prone beans, and that is only the beginning.

The project is designed to harness knowledge and harvest opportunities. Advanced knowledge includes higher confidence in genomics, including DNA sequences, to create new crops that can defend themselves by themselves against pests, or diseases, or both. With the legumes come livelihoods and the likelihood of higher income and lower poverty figures. With capacity-building of national programs comes the ability to initiate and sustain further research for development in the project countries. All is well that runs well.

For the finale, Bill Gates’ Tropical Legumes project I rate 9 , where 10 is max.

I’m withholding the perfect score because I’m disappointed Tropical Legumes does not include my favorite crop, sweet sorghum. It could not, even if they wanted to: Sweet sorghum is not a legume; like rice, it is a grass (Family Gramineae). And that’s precisely why I want sweet sorghum in the project – I believe any combination of those legumes should be part of a multiple cropping system where there is a biofuel crop such as sweet sorghum, among other crops. Multiple cropping systems simulate the natural world where the forces of nature work out a balance in favor of the populations of the enemies of pests and disease, and in favor of a richer soil, so that farming requires the least pesticides and fertilizers and often leads to higher yields. If you want organic foods, this is the way to do it.

If I have one, sweet sorghum is my hidden agenda. So, I would advise those thinking of the Gates Foundation, those who want to request for funds in the quest for knowledge: Do so for this one and only crop that can be transformed into 2 more than the 4 Fs, these 6: food, feed, forage, fertilizer, fuel for homes, fuel for cars. Somebody’s favorite, sugarcane comes up short: no feed (no grains). Sweet sorghum is a Perfect 10, the one I call ‘Discovery Sorghum, The Great Climate Crop’ (americanchronicle.com). Because, Bill, while you and Melinda were busy and heart-fully finding and funding ways to reduce the world’s inequity, something urgent came up that needs everyone’s attention ASAP, this:

GLOBAL WARNiNG:
GLOBAL WARMiNG.

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