The bill gates problem, p.58
The Bill Gates Problem, page 58
institute’s first temporary offices: Schwab, “Playing Games with Public Health Data.”
“repurposing IHME staff on the fly”: “Goalkeepers,” Supplemental Narrative to Grant proposal narrative to the Gates Foundation, OPP1152504, IHME, March 29, 2018.
“consultant advisor”: “Tamer H. Farag,” LinkedIn, n.d., https://www.linkedin.com/in/tamer-h-farag-2a596531; “IHME Global Public Goods.”
“exclusive academic control”: American Association of University Professors, ed., Recommended Principles to Guide Academy-Industry Relationships (Washington, DC: American Association of University Professors, 2014).
decrying billionaire industrialist: Erica L. Green and Stephanie Saul, “What Charles Koch and Other Donors to George Mason University Got for Their Money,” New York Times, May 5, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/us/koch-donors-george-mason.html; Ed Pilkington, “Koch Brothers Sought Say in Academic Hiring in Return for University Donation,” Guardian, September 12, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/12/koch-brothers-sought-say-academic-hiring-university-donation.
dark-money strategy: Sarah Larimer, “George Mason University Foundation Is Not Subject to Public Records Laws, Judge Rules,” Washington Post, October 27, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/07/06/george-mason-university-foundation-is-not-a-public-body-judge-rules-in-records-case/.
emblazoned across: “William H. Gates Public Service Law Program,” UW School of Law, July 13, 2022, https://www.law.uw.edu/careers/gates/; “About the Program,” Mary Gates Scholarships, n.d., https://www.uwb.edu/financial-aid/scholarships/merit-scholarships/upcoming-opps/mary-gates-scholarships; “Mary Gates Hall,” Undergraduate Academic Affairs (blog), n.d., https://www.washington.edu/uaa/about/mary-gates-hall/.
highest governing board: “About the Gates Family,” Give to the UW (blog), n.d., https://www.washington.edu/giving/recognition/gates-volunteer-service-award/about-the-gates-family/.
lucky to publish: Schwab, “Playing Games with Public Health Data.”
new auditing process: Schwab, “Playing Games with Public Health Data.”
one-hundred-thousand-dollar prize: “‘Activist Editor’ Richard Horton of The Lancet Receives $100,000 Roux Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Population Health,” Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, April 22, 2019, https://www.healthdata.org/news-release/%E2%80%98activist-editor%E2%80%99-richard-horton-lancet-receives-100000-roux-prize-lifetime-achievement.
CHAPTER 13: AGRICULTURE
seed and agrochemical giant: Bayer acquired Monsanto in 2018 and ended the use of the “Monsanto” name. To avoid confusion, and because my reporting focuses on Gates’s work with Monsanto before the acquisition, I refer to the company throughout this chapter as “Monsanto.” Jeff Daniels, “Germany’s Bayer Closes $63 Billion Monsanto Takeover, Plans to Drop US Company’s Name,” CNBC, June 7, 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/07/germanys-bayer-closes-monsanto-deal-plans-to-drop-us-companys-name.html.
genetic traits: William Neuman, “Rapid Rise in Seed Prices Draws U.S. Scrutiny,” New York Times, March 12, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/business/12seed.html; Bart Elmore, “It Could Soon Be Harder to Find Produce Untouched by Chemicals,” Washington Post, June 8, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/06/09/it-could-soon-be-harder-find-produce-untouched-by-chemicals/.
don’t grow GMOs: Bill Chappell, “Bayer to Pay More than $10 Billion to Resolve Cancer Lawsuits over Weedkiller Roundup,” NPR, June 24, 2020, https://www.npr.org/2020/06/24/882949098/bayer-to-pay-more-than-10-billion-to-resolve-roundup-cancer-lawsuits. Note: GMO (genetically modified organism) is imperfect shorthand, but I use it in this book as it is commonly used in public discourse. GMOs involve a variety of laboratory-based modifications like transgenesis, where a gene construct is moved from one organism into another.
skyrocketed with the advent: Danica Jefferies, “A Potentially Cancer-Causing Chemical Is Sprayed on Much of America’s Farmland. Here Is Where It Is Used the Most,” NBC News, October 28, 2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/data-graphics/toxic-herbicides-map-showing-high-use-state-rcna50052.
technology agreements: Monsanto v. U.S. Farmers, Center for Food Safety, 2005, https://www.centerforfoodsafety.org/files/cfsmonsantovsfarmerreport11305.pdf.
“seed police”: Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, “Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear,” Vanity Fair, April 2, 2008, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/05/monsanto200805.
library of documents: University of California, San Francisco, Industry Documents Library, https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/results/#q=Monsanto&col=%5B%22bvhp%22%2C%22benzene%22%2C%22marketpr%22%2C%22nytepa%22%2C%22pfas%22%2C%22roundup%22%2C%22usrtk%22%2C%22sanjour%22%5D&h=%7B%22hideDuplicates%22%3Atrue%2C%22hideFolders%22%3Atrue%7D&cache=true&count=1615.
caught up in this scandal: Laura Krantz, “Harvard Professor Failed to Disclose Connection,” Boston Globe, October 1, 2015, https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/10/01/harvard-professor-failed-disclose-monsanto-connection-paper-touting-gmos/lLJipJQmI5WKS6RAgQbnrN/story.html. Note: Juma, though he produced a report very similar to what Monsanto had proposed he write, appeared to defend the work as independent, telling the news media that his work was based on previous research he published and that he took no money from Monsanto.
after he died: “Gates Foundation, Calestous Juma Bet on Huge Progress in African Agriculture,” Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, January 22, 2015, https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/gates-foundation-calestous-juma-bet-huge-progress-african-agriculture; “Calestous Juma Fellowship,” n.d., https://gcgh.grandchallenges.org/challenge/calestous-juma-science-leadership-fellowship.
no disclosures: Calestous Juma, Public Comment to FDA, Docket No. FDA-2015-N-3403, November 18, 2015, https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FDA-2015-N-3403-0607.
Monsanto executive Mark Edge: “Altruism or PR? How Monsanto Plans to Snag a Foothold in African Seed Markets,” St. Louis Public Radio, December 14, 2016, https://news.stlpublicradio.org/health-science-environment/2016-12-14/altruism-or-pr-how-monsanto-plans-to-snag-a-foothold-in-african-seed-markets.
“impose their preferences on Africa”: Melissa Allison, “On Voters’ Plates: Genetically Engineered Crops,” Seattle Times, August 10, 2013, https://special.seattletimes.com/o/html/businesstechnology/2021586574_gmooverviewxml.html.
“a good choice”: Bill Gates, Interview by Nilay Patel, The Verge, January 22, 2015, 4:30, n.d., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RETFyDKcw0.
$6.5 billion: Of the foundation’s grants coded as being primarily for “agricultural development,” the large majority of money went to organizations located outside Africa, though most of this funding appears aimed at African agriculture. For example, Gates paid Harvard “to promote the benefits of science and technology for African agriculture” and the Washington-D.C.-based World Resources Institute “to develop an educational online resource on land and natural resource property rights in Africa.”
African-led: The African continent is made up of a heterogeneous, diverse group of nations and cannot be understood as one entity—in the same way that we would not generally lump together Canada and Mexico as having a monolithic “North American” identity. Nevertheless, “Africa” is the framing the Gates Foundation often uses in its work (which spans much of the continent), which is why the word appears in places in this chapter.
companies that have long eyed Africa: Winnie Nanteza, “WEMA Achieves Major Milestone in African Agriculture,” Alliance for Science, May 29, 2018, https://allianceforscience.org/blog/2018/05/wema-achieves-major-milestone-african-agriculture/. Note: Gates has also put industry veterans like Monsanto alum Rob Horsch and Enock Chikava into key director positions in the foundation’s agricultural work. See Horsch’s and Chikava’s LinkedIn profiles at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-horsch/ and https://www.linkedin.com/in/enock-chikava-4881b7b1/.
“better tools and knowledge”: Bill Gates, “Growing Enough Food to Feed the World,” GatesNotes, January 19, 2012, https://www.gatesnotes.com/Growing-Enough-Food-to-Feed-the-World.
South Africa: The industry trade group ISAAA provides the statistics on GMO adoption, and its most recent, publicly available statistics, from 2019, report that only around thirty countries (out of more than two hundred globally) today grow GMOs. In many countries, this amounts to an extremely small acreage of nonfood GMO production—like a few hundred acres of cotton grown in Eswatini and Ethiopia. Ninety percent of all GMOs grown worldwide come from only five countries: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, India, and the United States. Virtually all of this is soy, corn, canola, and cotton. (Of GMO products, India grows only cotton.) “Brief 55, Executive Summary, Global Status of Commercialized Biotech/GM Crops in 2019,” ISAAA, 2019, 4, https://www.isaaa.org/resources/publications/briefs/55/executivesummary/pdf/B55-ExecSum-English.pdf.
helping to create, fund, and staff: “AGRA Is Supporting the Government of Ethiopia in Designing Approaches to Attract Investments to Boost Wheat, Rice, Edible Oilseed, and Animal Feed Value Chains,” AGRA, n.d., https://agra.org/news/agra-is-supporting-the-government-of-ethiopia-in-designing-approaches-to-attract-investments-to-boost-wheat-rice-edible-oilseed-and-animal-feed-value-chains/.
at least $27 million: “Trust, Collaboration and Collective Learning: Synergos Experience in Namibia and Ethiopia,” Synergos, 2016, 6, https://www.syngs.info/files/trust-collaboration-collective-learning-in-namibia-and-ethiopia-synergos.pdf.
Khalid Bomba: “Origin & History,” Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency, n.d., https://www.ata.gov.et/about-ata/origin-history-2/; “Khalid Bomba,” LinkedIn, n.d., https://www.linkedin.com/in/khalid-bomba-2a01352a/?originalSubdomain=it.
“first official representative”: “Foundation Appoints Ethiopia Representative,” Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, n.d., https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/media-center/press-releases/2012/02/foundation-appoints-ethiopia-representative.
revolving door: LinkedIn shows multiple people having worked for both Gates and the ATA. See, as examples, LinkedIn profiles for Ross Lescano Lipstein (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ross-lescano-lipstein-a3a32015/) and Abeneazer Adam (https://www.linkedin.com/in/abeneazer-adam-419859a5/?).
agrochemical giant DuPont: Joeva Rock and Alex Park, Mapping Financial Flows of Industrial Agriculture in Africa (San Francisco: Thousand Currents, 2019).
sixty-eight different policy reforms: Rachel Percy, Ethel Sibanda, Daniel Ticehurst, and Gareth Davies, Mid-Term Evaluation of AGRA’s 2017–2021 Strategy Implementation, ITAD, January 27, 2020, 115–36, https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/AGRA-MTE-report-final-27.01.20.pdf.
“the normal timetable”: “Policy and Advocacy,” AGRA, n.d., https://agra.org/policy-and-advocacy/.
“concentrating power and profit”: Million Belay and Bridget Mugambe, “Bill Gates Should Stop Telling Africans What Kind of Agriculture Africans Need,” Scientific American, July 6, 2021, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bill-gates-should-stop-telling-africans-what-kind-of-agriculture-africans-need1/.
“harmed broader efforts”: “Call to End Support for Green Revolution Programs in Africa,” Oakland Institute, September 8, 2021, https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/call-end-support-green-revolution-programs-africa. Note: AGRA’s target countries have changed over time. As of September 2022, AGRA reported working in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda. In 2014, AGRA reported also working in Liberia, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, and Zambia—a total of seventeen different countries. “Focus Countries,” AGRA, n.d., https://agra.org/focus-countries/; AGRA, Progress Report, 2007–2014, 2015, 4, https://agra.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/agra-progress-report-2007-2014.pdf.
“820 million people hungry”: “Call to Revoke AGRA’s Agnes Kalibata as Special Envoy to 2021 UN Food Systems Summit,” February 10, 2020, https://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/letter_antonio_guterresenglish.pdf.
“humanitarian crisis”: “Press Release: African Faith Communities Tell Gates Foundation, ‘Big Farming Is No Solution for Africa,’” Southern African Faith Communities’ Institute, August 4, 2021, https://safcei.org/press-release-african-faith-communities-tell-gates-foundation-big-farming-is-no-solution-for-africa/.
two hundred million dollars: Nina Shapiro, “Gates-Funded ‘Green Revolution’ in Africa Has Failed, Critics Say,” Seattle Times, September 8, 2022, https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/gates-funded-green-revolution-in-africa-has-failed-critics-say. Note: The foundation appeared to announce a two-hundred-million-dollar commitment in the Seattle Times, but it never appeared in its grant database. As with many projects, it is likely that Gates has put more money into AGRA than it reports, directing donations through surrogates, third parties, or unreported contracts.
“fund the researchers”: To Mayet’s point, when Gates Foundation employee Prabhu Pingali published a commentary about Gates’s agricultural work in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, he reported that “All the [peer] reviewers suggested are grantees of the Gates Foundation. It is hard to find reviewers who are not grantees.” Prabhu L. Pingali, “Green Revolution: Impacts, Limits, and the Path Ahead,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 31 (July 31, 2012): 12302–8, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0912953109.
corporate partners: “Our Partners,” AGRA, n.d., https://agra.org/our-partners/; “Microsoft Reaffirms Its Commitment to the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa to Support Digital Transformation in Agriculture,” New Center Middle East & Africa, Microsoft, September 22, 2020, https://news.microsoft.com/en-xm/2020/09/22/microsoft-reaffirms-its-commitment-to-the-alliance-for-a-green-revolution-in-africa-to-support-digital-transformation-in-agriculture/.
civil society groups: “Our Partners—Civil Society and Farmer Organization Partners,” AGRA, n.d., https://agra.org/our-partners/.
Gary Toenniessen: “African Farmer and World Agricultural Leader Announced as President of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA),” Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, November 22, 2007, https://web.archive.org/web/20071122234420/http://www.agra-alliance.org/news/pr111407.html; “Gates, Rockefeller Foundation Turn to Feeding Africa,” Talk of the Nation, NPR, September 13, 2006, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6068582.
at least $675 million: Analysis of AGRA’s IRS 990 filings and the Gates Foundation’s charitable grant records.
non-African: AGRA, Board of Directors, Board and Staff, January 20, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20140120075220/http://www.agra.org/who-we-are/board--staff/board-of-directors.
top brass: “Our People,” AGRA, n.d., https://agra.org/our-people. Note: AGRA is legally incorporated as a nonprofit organization in the United States, where it files an annual tax form with the IRS. It has also paid tens of thousands of dollars lobbying Congress, using the law firm bearing the name of Bill Gates’s father, K&L Gates. Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, LD-2 Disclosure Form, Quarter 4, 2009, Lobbyist K&L Gates LLP, n.d., https://lda.senate.gov/filings/public/filing/007a9908-797c-4c95-83c7-891a2f422d54/print/.
Internal policy documents: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Board Service Policy and Guidelines, n.d., https://docs.gatesfoundation.org/documents/board-service-policy.docx.
“re-fashion its institutional identity”: AGRA Institutional Evaluation, Final Report, DAI, February 15, 2016, xi, xiii, https://agra.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/AGRA-Institutional-Evaluation-2016_2.pdf. Note: The evaluation also cited “fatigue among staff caused by too frequent, top-down strategy refreshes”—a prominent complaint that staff and grantees have of the Gates Foundation, another indication of AGRA’s pedigree as a Gates-based organization.
“highly regarded political access”: Percy et al., Mid-Term Evaluation of AGRA’s 2017–2021 Strategy Implementation.
spearheaded by: “Bill & Melinda Gates, Rockefeller Foundations Form Alliance to Help Spur ‘Green Revolution’ in Africa,” Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, n.d., https://www.gatesfoundation.org/ideas/media-center/press-releases/2006/09/foundations-form-alliance-to-help-spur-green-revolution-in-africa.
wave of suicides: Daniel Zwerdling, “‘Green Revolution’ Trapping India’s Farmers in Debt,” Morning Edition, NPR, April 14, 2009, https://www.npr.org/2009/04/14/102944731/green-revolution-trapping-indias-farmers-in-debt; Salimah Shivji, “Burdened by Debt and Unable to Eke Out a Living, Many Farmers in India Turn to Suicide,” CBC News, March 30, 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/india-farmers-suicide-1.5968086.
“In the 1960s, there was this thing”: Goodell, “Bill Gates: The Rolling Stone Interview.”
“New philanthropists”: Mark Dowie, American Foundations: An Investigative History (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), 105.
“suggested socialism”: Dowie, American Foundations, 117.
same premise, approach: “Bill & Melinda Gates, Rockefeller Foundations Form Alliance to Help Spur ‘Green Revolution’ in Africa.” Note: AGRA takes pains to distance itself from GMOs, yet the group explicitly partners with the companies that sell GMOs. Sources I spoke with see AGRA as organizing its work to create the enabling environment—promoting industrialized agriculture—to allow for the eventual introduction of GMOs.
