News

Novelle and the Gates Foundation

For many years, the world’s largest philanthropic organization, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has made significant contributions in many areas, particularly medicine and education. A few years ago, the BMGF decided to enter the world of agriculture and food development.
       
This was always a complicated venture from many points of view. First, the BMGF operates on a very large scale, and it is simply not effective for them to contribute small sums of money. Second, unless one is installing large scale infrastructure projects, such as new roads or irrigation projects, it is very difficult to spend large sums of money effectively in food development in the developing world, such as sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.
       
In their explorations into this complicated world, the BMGF found some work done by the University of California at Davis (the world’s leading agricultural university) together with Dr. Lisa Kitanoja, one of the leading experts in the world of postharvest work. After extensive negotiations, Dr. Kitanoja, UC Davis, and the World Food Logistics Organization, were asked to do a one year study of the postharvest realities of sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, and prepare a report to the BMGF that would describe a ten year project (in - delete) that would significantly improve the lives of the poorest people in these geographic areas. Novelle principal, Henry Winogrond, was asked to join the team that would carry out this preliminary work, to particularly focus on the economic impact of the proposed interventions.
       
When the background work was initiated, two things quickly became evident. While there are extensive anecdotal reports about postharvest losses, there is no solid evidence for this. In other words, though there are endless reports dating back 25 years that indicate postharvest losses of 30 – 70% for various crops, there was no solid empirical evidence for these claims, and this data base would be extremely important to secure in order to provide the economic basis for the recommendation to be made to the BMGF. In addition, though agencies such as USAID, the World Bank, and a number of European counterparts have made attempts to support and improve agriculture in developing countries for decades, 95% of the funds have gone into production, and 5% went into postharvest.
       
Most of the calendar year of 2009 was spent in collecting the data that would provide the backbone for the report to be submitted to the BMGF. Working with local universities in Ghana, Benin, Rwanda, India and Indonesia, extensive field work was completed, and the data is now being analyzed. It is expected that this project will begin to move forward in 2010 in eastern Africa, west Arica, southern Africa, and India, with solid expectations of improving the lives of hundreds of millions of people over the next decade.