Finding Hope: Pioneering Your Own 40 Chances

Howard G. Buffett, Howard W. Buffett, Ronnie D. Green Author

10/26/2015 Added

735 Plays

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Heuermann Lecture focused on finding solutions to some of the most challenging problems facing today’s society.

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[00:00:00.455](inspirational rock music)
[00:00:22.721]To start our conference, we have
[00:00:24.427]a really special event this afternoon.
[00:00:27.585]Many of you will know about the Heuermann Lecture series
[00:00:31.126]that the university started, we're now in our fifth season
[00:00:34.400]of that lecture series, that focuses on food security,
[00:00:37.626]natural resource security, agricultural production issues,
[00:00:42.631]rural landscape security broadly writ.
[00:00:46.408]Where we bring leaders from around the world,
[00:00:49.008]in the various subjects important in those areas,
[00:00:51.343]to our campus to dialogue with us.
[00:00:54.789]The Heuermann Lectures were enabled
[00:00:56.950]by the generosity of the Heuermann family,
[00:00:59.724]for which the lectures are named.
[00:01:01.743]We're very pleased, as is the case,
[00:01:03.961]I think, in every lecture, maybe but one,
[00:01:06.630]Keith has missed one of these in the last four years,
[00:01:10.126]to have Keith Heuermann with us here today.
[00:01:12.829]Keith, if you would stand and be recognized,
[00:01:14.710]and let us thank you for your support.
[00:01:17.265](applause)
[00:01:25.740]The Heuermann's have been longtime leaders
[00:01:27.400]in agriculture in the state of Nebraska, and beyond.
[00:01:30.523]From the Phillips, Nebraska area, rural place
[00:01:34.330]about, a little over an hour, hour and a half
[00:01:37.349]west of us here in Lincoln.
[00:01:39.520]So, Keith, thank you very much
[00:01:40.983]for your enormous generosity in helping us
[00:01:44.141]develop such a great lecture series.
[00:01:47.287]The lectures are live streamed,
[00:01:49.225]today they're being live streamed on cable,
[00:01:51.965]and aired on NET, so we appreciate
[00:01:54.333]the opportunity to spread that
[00:01:56.584]beyond the room that we're in here,
[00:01:59.092]and I know today is going to be
[00:02:00.625]an exceptional one for all of us.
[00:02:03.944]So, let me, kind of, introduce
[00:02:05.605]to you first, our two speakers
[00:02:07.427]that we have joining us today.
[00:02:09.808]This is going to be very much a dialogue format,
[00:02:12.652]not a stand up kind of lecture,
[00:02:14.649]but a dialogue amongst the three of us.
[00:02:17.667]We are extremely pleased to have
[00:02:20.487]for our lecture topic this afternoon,
[00:02:22.822]finding hope, pioneering your own 40 chances.
[00:02:27.354]Our two guests are no strangers
[00:02:30.430]to many of us in the room here,
[00:02:33.030]natives to Nebraska.
[00:02:35.213]First, Howard G. Buffett, he's the Chairman
[00:02:38.115]and CEO of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation,
[00:02:40.878]immediately here on my right.
[00:02:43.664]A private family foundation working to improve
[00:02:46.160]the standard of living, and quality of life
[00:02:48.864]for the world's most impoverished
[00:02:50.641]and marginalized populations.
[00:02:53.519]He's a farmer, businessman, philanthropist,
[00:02:56.724]photographer, many of us know about his photography,
[00:03:00.555]and former elected official.
[00:03:03.179]Howard has dedicated his life to addressing
[00:03:05.523]global food insecurity and conservation.
[00:03:09.760]He has traveled to 139 countries,
[00:03:13.058]documenting the challenges of preserving
[00:03:15.241]our biodiversity, while providing
[00:03:17.504]adequate resources to meet the needs
[00:03:19.663]of a growing global population.
[00:03:22.484]Howard is a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador
[00:03:25.654]against hunger, and serves on the corporate boards
[00:03:28.916]of Berkshire Hathaway, The Coca-Cola Company,
[00:03:32.074]and Lindsay Corporation.
[00:03:34.256]He operates a 1,500 acre family farm in central Illinois,
[00:03:38.481]and oversees three foundation operated research farms,
[00:03:41.918]including over 1,400 acres in Arizona,
[00:03:44.774]4,000 acres in Illinois, and 9,200 acres in southern Africa.
[00:03:50.213]Howard has written extensively on conservation,
[00:03:53.301]wildlife, and the human condition.
[00:03:56.179]"40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World"
[00:03:59.244]much of our topic today is surrounding this book
[00:04:01.938]that we'll talk about in a few minutes,
[00:04:04.665]documents the people, places, and experiences
[00:04:07.278]that have shaped his evolving views
[00:04:09.658]of the role of philanthropy, and addressing
[00:04:11.583]the world's most difficult challenges.
[00:04:13.918]Please join me in welcoming Howard G. Buffett.
[00:04:16.600](applause)
[00:04:24.981]And also joining us, to my far right,
[00:04:27.384]is Howard W. Buffett, now you see what I'm,
[00:04:29.555]the challenge I'm going to have in this dialogue.
[00:04:33.083]So, we decided I would sit in the middle
[00:04:35.476]and look at which Howard I wanted to talk to,
[00:04:37.983]to keep it simple.
[00:04:39.620]Howard W. Buffett is a lecturer here
[00:04:41.640]at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
[00:04:43.997]A role he started with us last academic school year,
[00:04:48.095]and is a lecturer in international and public affairs
[00:04:50.939]at Columbia University in New York.
[00:04:53.481]He teaches management techniques
[00:04:55.176]for improving the effectiveness of foreign aid,
[00:04:57.951]and global philanthropy.
[00:04:59.936]Howard also serves on the Board of Counselors
[00:05:02.293]for the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha,
[00:05:05.497]and is currently a member of
[00:05:06.878]the UNL chancellor search committee.
[00:05:09.595]Howard is a trustee of the Howard G. Buffett Foundation,
[00:05:12.857]and previously served as
[00:05:14.157]the foundation's executive director.
[00:05:16.955]Prior to joining the foundation,
[00:05:18.975]he served in the US Department of Defense,
[00:05:21.598]overseeing agriculture based economic stabilization,
[00:05:24.896]and redevelopment programs in Iraq, and in Afghanistan.
[00:05:29.435]For his work, he received
[00:05:30.793]the Joint Civilian Service Commendation Award,
[00:05:34.496]the highest ranking civilian honor
[00:05:36.435]presented by The Joint Chiefs of Staff
[00:05:38.850]at the request and approval of the combatant commanders.
[00:05:42.738]Prior to that, Howard was a policy adviser
[00:05:45.571]for the White House Domestic Policy Counsel,
[00:05:48.311]where he co-authored the president's
[00:05:49.971]Cross-Sector Partnerships Strategy.
[00:05:53.152]He earned a BA degree from that institution
[00:05:55.577]in Evanston, Illinois, known as Northwestern University,
[00:06:00.048]and an MPA in Advanced Management and Finance
[00:06:03.356]from Columbia University.
[00:06:05.910]Howard currently lives in Omaha,
[00:06:08.556]where he and his father operate
[00:06:10.472]a 400 acre no-till farm, and he's joined today
[00:06:13.212]by his wife Lili, and their new son,
[00:06:16.567]who is with them as well today.
[00:06:19.133]So, please join me in welcoming Howard W. Buffett.
[00:06:21.652](applause)
[00:06:29.627]Thank you very much.
[00:06:32.564]I think many of you probably know about
[00:06:35.966]the 40 chances book that was published
[00:06:39.507]in 2013 by Howard as the author,
[00:06:44.173]along with his son Howard.
[00:06:46.867]And it talks about living in a world
[00:06:49.746]where you really have 40 chances to make a difference.
[00:06:53.332]And we're gonna talk about where
[00:06:54.470]that moniker really came from, Howard, today.
[00:06:59.648]And it's based on, if you had the resources
[00:07:02.341]to do something great in the world,
[00:07:03.827]what would you do?
[00:07:06.264]How would you use those resources?
[00:07:08.331]How would you make a difference?
[00:07:10.224]Where are the needs for making that difference?
[00:07:13.649]So, what we're going to try to do
[00:07:14.960]in the next 40 minutes or so, is just
[00:07:17.850]to kind of dialogue about some of the things
[00:07:20.370]that are the learnings in this book,
[00:07:23.122]some of the observations that both Howard,
[00:07:26.128]and Howard have had during their lifetime of philanthropy.
[00:07:31.119]And I think they have some great challenges
[00:07:33.539]for us to consider, including how we think
[00:07:36.395]about world futures in this conference
[00:07:39.332]over the next couple of days.
[00:07:42.896]So, Howard, got it?
[00:07:45.868]Yeah that's right.
[00:07:46.878](laughing)
[00:07:48.028]I think that's kinda cheating.
[00:07:50.901]Would you kind of explain for us
[00:07:52.885]the origin of the 40 chances.
[00:07:55.747]We started our book tour, I'll get to your question
[00:07:58.707]in a minute, but and it talks about 40 chances,
[00:08:03.454]and why that's important, a mindset
[00:08:06.775]is what it really is, and we would do it,
[00:08:09.236]and we started in New York,
[00:08:10.164]and my dad went with us to kick it off.
[00:08:12.022]And every time I would say that you really had 40 chances
[00:08:15.621]in your life, he'd give me this very dirty look,
[00:08:17.790]and it was like, "I think I have more than that."
[00:08:20.750]So, you have to think about it, and I learned
[00:08:22.665]to kinda, not to take it too literally,
[00:08:24.731]you have to think about it more as a mindset.
[00:08:27.344]But basically I was going down,
[00:08:29.886]farmers don't have that much to do in January, February.
[00:08:31.802]They always tell you that they have a lot to do,
[00:08:33.310]but we really don't, and so I went down
[00:08:36.422]to Sloan Implement, which is where I buy
[00:08:37.862]a lot of my equipment, and they had this guy
[00:08:41.704]who was gonna tell us how we could plant better,
[00:08:43.527]and you know, every farmer thinks
[00:08:44.641]they know how to do everything right already.
[00:08:46.370]So, I thought this would be interesting.
[00:08:48.187]And so, he started out telling us
[00:08:50.904]that we really didn't think about
[00:08:55.100]our business the right way,
[00:08:56.656]and that we go out and we plant,
[00:08:59.465]and we spray, and we fertilize, and we harvest,
[00:09:02.623]and we do these different things,
[00:09:03.459]but we think about them in pieces,
[00:09:05.363]and we just kind of blend them all together.
[00:09:07.940]And he said, "What you really need to do
[00:09:09.658]"is think about it in the terms
[00:09:10.865]"that by the time your dad gets off the the tractor,
[00:09:13.779]"and lets you get on it, you probably are gonna have
[00:09:18.005]"40 crops that you plant."
[00:09:20.431]And I had never thought about it that way,
[00:09:23.716]and I realized that that's not very many.
[00:09:26.630]And so you want to get it right.
[00:09:29.231]So, it affected my farming a little bit,
[00:09:34.325]but then technology fixed that.
[00:09:35.740]Cause I was thinking, you know,
[00:09:36.890]I gotta straight rows, and then I got GPS,
[00:09:38.828]so it fixed that problem, but anyway,
[00:09:40.778]most problems aren't that easy to fix.
[00:09:42.823]So, essentially I started thinking about,
[00:09:46.619]you know, your life is a lot like that.
[00:09:48.221]By the time you really get through school,
[00:09:52.005]you get enough experience that you're,
[00:09:55.279]you know, better at making judgements
[00:09:59.598]and better at making decisions,
[00:10:01.745]you know, you might have 40 really solid years
[00:10:04.624]of doing what you're gonna do.
[00:10:08.084]And that's not that long.
[00:10:10.649]So, the bottom line is you need to think about
[00:10:13.505]that life has a certain amount of urgency to it,
[00:10:16.523]and I don't think, and a lot of the places where we work,
[00:10:20.482]there's not enough urgency to tryin' to solve the problems.
[00:10:23.546]So, the 40 chances really came out of planting school
[00:10:27.761]in one February, and kinda changed my mindset
[00:10:30.686]about how I look at some things.
[00:10:33.809]So, your dad, wrote the forward to the book
[00:10:37.304]and he describes you as a force of nature.
[00:10:40.594]He also describes you as the Indiana Jones of his field.
[00:10:44.302]My mother had other descriptions that weren't so nice.
[00:10:46.601]Said your only speed is fast-forward,
[00:10:49.921]he also says, "In this ovarian lottery,
[00:10:52.347]"my children received some lucky breaks."
[00:10:55.284]What was it like growing up
[00:10:56.387]the oldest son of Warren Buffett,
[00:10:58.326]and how did that influence
[00:10:59.648]your thinking about philanthropy?
[00:11:02.110]Well the greatest thing is we didn't have
[00:11:03.967]to worry about much, I mean, you know.
[00:11:06.162]We didn't, and the other thing is
[00:11:07.822]that Warren Buffett was not a household name,
[00:11:10.390]you know, for the most part of when I was growing up.
[00:11:12.680]I mean, it started to change a little bit
[00:11:14.897]in junior high school, and a lot more
[00:11:16.638]in the last few years of high school,
[00:11:18.217]but, you know, people didn't know who he was,
[00:11:20.539]and he hadn't quite done evertyhing
[00:11:21.920]that he had done today, at that point.
[00:11:23.836]And so, it wasn't nearly the amount
[00:11:27.667]of impact that, probably, some people imagine.
[00:11:31.985]The great thing about it was, you know,
[00:11:34.609]we did have every advantage,
[00:11:36.188]and my mom and dad both,
[00:11:41.190]not just spoke about, but really lived
[00:11:44.713]in a way that they gave back a lot to the community.
[00:11:48.079]And they really believed in that,
[00:11:49.960]and so we didn't, we learned it
[00:11:51.713]as much by watching as we did being told.
[00:11:56.578]Which is a much more powerful way to learn something.
[00:11:59.827]And that could be good, and that could be bad,
[00:12:02.301]but I mean, you know, in this case
[00:12:04.146]it was a great learning experience for us,
[00:12:06.503]and they had high expectations.
[00:12:08.558]My mom and dad both had high expectations
[00:12:10.822]of all three of us kids being productive citizens,
[00:12:14.339]and giving back to our community
[00:12:16.986]in whatever way we could do that.
[00:12:18.483]And then, later when the foundation was created,
[00:12:22.744]they gave us some serious, eventually,
[00:12:24.688]some serious financial resources to do that.
[00:12:27.045]So, I mean, that's really, I think,
[00:12:29.169]where it comes from, is just growing up in that environment.
[00:12:32.874]You talk a lot about your mom in the book, too.
[00:12:35.726]And you say that a lot of your wisest,
[00:12:39.546]and most insightful friends, and colleagues,
[00:12:41.612]and advisers would be women.
[00:12:43.933]Can you elaborate on that?
[00:12:47.758]Well, this'll get me in trouble with all the men,
[00:12:50.323]but no, I've just found that, and it's true
[00:12:55.324]when you work in rural areas, in poor countries,
[00:13:00.109]I think you really see what women are capable of,
[00:13:05.089]and what they focus on.
[00:13:07.411]And a lot of times it's much better
[00:13:09.489]than what men focus on.
[00:13:10.928]And, you know, they put their family first,
[00:13:15.554]they will sacrifice for their kids.
[00:13:17.690]And it doesn't meant that husbands and men
[00:13:19.756]don't do that, but women have a different way
[00:13:23.552]of solving problems, and they have a different way
[00:13:25.456]of kind of analyzing things.
[00:13:27.395]I mean, there are some things they're not
[00:13:28.718]as good at as men, but women tend
[00:13:31.110]to really add a lot of value
[00:13:35.788]when you're trying to solve problems.
[00:13:38.470]So, they just, you know, women
[00:13:40.513]have been very influential in my life,
[00:13:42.812]but they've been, and they've been very helpful.
[00:13:44.692]And I think, you know, if you look at
[00:13:47.374]a lot of parts in the world, and certainly women
[00:13:49.916]have made a lot of progress in this country,
[00:13:51.774]but not enough, but if you look at
[00:13:54.514]a lot of parts in the world women are
[00:13:57.752]really put in bad circumstances,
[00:14:00.375]and they're under appreciated,
[00:14:02.013]they're not treated fairly.
[00:14:05.252]And when I look at that, I think,
[00:14:09.013]"Look at the resources you're missing.
[00:14:11.010]"Look at the missed opportunities
[00:14:14.168]"of including a big part of your population
[00:14:16.489]"that has a lot to offer."
[00:14:18.045]You know, we have some students sitting here from Rwanda,
[00:14:20.494]and if you look at Rwanda, it may be one of
[00:14:23.165]the only countries in the world
[00:14:25.684]that has over 50% of its parliament are women.
[00:14:30.535]It makes a big difference in terms of
[00:14:34.389]how the outcome is reached, if you include
[00:14:38.139]all of the population, with men and women,
[00:14:40.821]versus, you know, having it out of balance
[00:14:43.758]when women aren't part of the equation equally.
[00:14:47.356]And so, I think it's been a big factor in my life.
[00:14:53.097]So, Howard, you stared travellin',
[00:14:56.022]as it's talked about in the book,
[00:14:57.345]with your dad when you were 13.
[00:14:59.934]How did those, kind of, early experiences,
[00:15:03.138]travellin' together, impact you?
[00:15:07.195]Well, in a lot of ways, as may be obvious.
[00:15:11.096]I mean, I would say, probably first and foremost
[00:15:15.076]it allowed me to develop a relationship
[00:15:16.597]with my father, that I think, maybe,
[00:15:19.998]few sons get to really have, you know.
[00:15:21.963]I mean, we really were able to travel the world together,
[00:15:24.519]and see things, and analyze things,
[00:15:26.481]and struggle with things together
[00:15:27.514]that I think, you know, it's not always
[00:15:29.418]the opportunity that folks have.
[00:15:31.194]And so, that was a very unique opportunity for us
[00:15:34.724]to be able to bond in that way,
[00:15:36.046]and sometimes, maybe, closer than
[00:15:38.070]that we woulda liked, you think back to Vietnam.
[00:15:40.521]I have a few stories.
[00:15:41.485]Yeah, we can reference a couple places
[00:15:43.644]that maybe, where that was a little too close,
[00:15:45.246]but nonetheless, you know, that was
[00:15:47.231]a very unique thing, and I think
[00:15:48.738]it was important that he and I shared that connection
[00:15:51.109]because one of the things that I ended up missing out on,
[00:15:54.672]as a result of that, was having
[00:15:56.541]a tight peer group back home.
[00:15:59.815]I mean, we had moved to Illinois
[00:16:00.779]when, before I went to high school.
[00:16:03.054]And a lot of folks that I went to school with
[00:16:04.939]couldn't quite relate to some of the stories
[00:16:06.693]I was bringing back home from these places
[00:16:09.015]that we were going to, you know.
[00:16:10.518]They had certainly never seen it in real life,
[00:16:12.561]and maybe sometimes seen some of these things on TV,
[00:16:14.801]and usually not in the extremes
[00:16:17.239]that we were seeing, you know, first hand.
[00:16:19.584]And so, I think the other thing is that
[00:16:21.140]beyond the connection that we were able to share,
[00:16:22.962]it really pushed me to connect with other people
[00:16:26.143]when we were out travelling, and exposed me
[00:16:29.022]to dozens, if not hundreds of differences
[00:16:32.342]of kinds of cultures from all over the world
[00:16:34.757]that you could imagine.
[00:16:35.802]And so, I think I like to credit the fact
[00:16:37.601]that we spent that time travelling,
[00:16:39.145]it allowed me to have effectively
[00:16:41.038]no judgement on any person's culture,
[00:16:42.837]or life choices that they've made.
[00:16:44.880]So, I think that was a big factor as well.
[00:16:46.819]And then, I'll just wrap up by saying,
[00:16:48.803]you know, starting that at the age of 13
[00:16:52.344]is a very interesting age to start exposing someone
[00:16:54.980]to both combination of the beauties around the world,
[00:16:58.381]I mean, we had some amazing trips to Brazil, and India,
[00:17:01.458]where you would see some of the most beautiful scenes
[00:17:03.199]you could imagine, and, but also some of
[00:17:05.358]the most horrific scenes that you can imagine,
[00:17:07.784]in terms of abject poverty.
[00:17:09.282]And I think one of the things that it led me to do,
[00:17:11.116]as a lot a children do at that age,
[00:17:13.322]is to start questioning it, and to be very inquisitive,
[00:17:15.725]and to really ask why.
[00:17:17.112]Why is there so much needless suffering around the world?
[00:17:20.060]Why are there so many of these people
[00:17:20.973]living in these conditions?
[00:17:22.354]That, later on, you tend to understand are because,
[00:17:24.978]well, there's other people that made some,
[00:17:26.557]probably, pretty selfish, or unwise decisions
[00:17:28.414]earlier down the line, that have led
[00:17:30.016]to those life conditions that they're in.
[00:17:31.653]And that's not always the case,
[00:17:32.512]but it definitely happens a lot.
[00:17:33.615]And so, part of what we wanted to explore
[00:17:35.379]in 40 chances, was to go and start digging deeper
[00:17:37.794]into why are there so many people
[00:17:39.756]who are living in these conditions
[00:17:41.056]that really don't have to be?
[00:17:43.796]You know, I'm gonna tell you
[00:17:44.957]the way the book really happened.
[00:17:48.544]I was sitting, we were all in Arizona
[00:17:50.390]doing, getting ready to have a board meeting or something,
[00:17:52.526]and I said, "You know, I've been around a lot,
[00:17:57.680]"and maybe it would be useful
[00:18:00.204]"to write a book for students.
[00:18:03.966]"You know, that they could use at school,
[00:18:06.206]"and just learn some of the things that we've learned,
[00:18:09.607]"rather than having to learn them,
[00:18:10.722]"you know, another way."
[00:18:12.138]And Howie says, "Dad, you're not thinkin' big enough."
[00:18:15.238]And that's one of the few times
[00:18:16.526]he could say that to me.
[00:18:17.862]Usually, I think too big.
[00:18:20.206]And so that's actually the origin of the book
[00:18:22.482]was then, well then what do we do?
[00:18:24.141]And we ended up, you know, it took awhile,
[00:18:25.883]but we got it done.
[00:18:27.740]So, you started your foundation
[00:18:29.586]focuses on conservation, and I know that's an area
[00:18:31.733]that's deep for both of you.
[00:18:34.855]Today, you're focused on food, water, and conflict.
[00:18:38.814]That seems like a little bit of a shift,
[00:18:41.635]what happened there?
[00:18:43.411]Well, in 1992 there was a guy I was visiting with,
[00:18:47.660]I was over at ADM at the time,
[00:18:49.146]and he was kind of givin' me a hard time
[00:18:52.210]about being so focused on conservation.
[00:18:54.800]And he said one line to me,
[00:18:58.747]and it changed how I looked at a lot of things eventually,
[00:19:02.148]he said, "No one will starve to save a tree."
[00:19:04.760]And at the time I didn't quite
[00:19:06.907]get the impact of that, and then I thought,
[00:19:08.742]"Well, every time I go, you know,
[00:19:10.669]"to the Serengeti, or the Marra,
[00:19:11.923]"or South Africa, or something.
[00:19:13.223]"To take pictures of the cheetahs,
[00:19:15.081]"or whatever I'm doin',
[00:19:16.659]"I'm gonna look around a little wider,
[00:19:19.155]"a little broader and stop in,
[00:19:22.626]"you don't just stop in, but I mean make a,
[00:19:24.786]"find a way to get to some of the villages
[00:19:27.374]"that are out in the really rural areas,
[00:19:29.812]"and try to visit with people."
[00:19:32.506]And I learned that
[00:19:37.248]the cheetah to us might be,
[00:19:38.420]"Wow, this is an amazing animal,"
[00:19:39.825]and you get these great pictures,
[00:19:40.927]but a cheetah to them, or a lion, or something else,
[00:19:43.343]you know, any predator was actually
[00:19:45.641]a serious problem for them.
[00:19:46.907]And I know that sounds simple,
[00:19:47.905]but, you know, it was a, it made me realize,
[00:19:51.864]well if we don't take care of people,
[00:19:54.069]we aren't gonna have to worry about the environment,
[00:19:55.787]because we won't have one to worry about.
[00:19:57.459]And so, in 1997 I went to Uganda
[00:20:02.346]to see the mountain gorillas for the first time,
[00:20:05.190]and when we drove up through those villages
[00:20:07.721]to get to the park, to Bwindi,
[00:20:11.268]there were people who threw rocks at us.
[00:20:12.935]They spit as us, they yelled names at,
[00:20:14.780]I didn't understand them, but they weren't very happy.
[00:20:18.635]And that really made me realize that there's a,
[00:20:22.337]this is a lot deeper issue, and a lot of people
[00:20:25.554]want to treat it on the surface.
[00:20:26.691]Because if you treat it on the surface
[00:20:27.713]you're gonna have success, if you treat it on the surface
[00:20:29.536]you can feel good about what you're doing,
[00:20:31.590]and you can walk away from it at some point.
[00:20:34.969]When the truth is it's very, very deep rooted
[00:20:37.638]with very, very challenging solutions,
[00:20:41.412]and sometimes there aren't good solutions.
[00:20:43.361]And so, that really had an effect, that trip did on me.
[00:20:47.283]And so, I just started to understand
[00:20:49.804]that you can focus on conservation,
[00:20:52.521]and you can do a lot of cool things,
[00:20:54.017]and get a lot of great pictures,
[00:20:55.899]and do all these other things,
[00:20:57.465]but the truth is that focusing on conservation
[00:21:00.983]means you're ignoring the largest single element,
[00:21:05.081]which is the human being, that is going to have
[00:21:07.659]the biggest negative impact on our environment.
[00:21:10.816]And you can't away with that forever.
[00:21:13.323]So, it really came around to me,
[00:21:16.284]and today, basically, a lot of what we work on,
[00:21:18.281]I would say is all of it, because on some of our work,
[00:21:22.215]particularly in Eastern Congo, and DRC,
[00:21:25.328]it is very much tied into tryin' to preserve the park,
[00:21:29.066]which is Africa's oldest park,
[00:21:30.528]and one of the few places you can see mountain gorillas,
[00:21:33.101]besides Rwanda and Uganda,
[00:21:34.424]so it really kind of brought us around full circle
[00:21:39.080]where we're really working on all of those issues.
[00:21:42.592]So, we talked about in the introduction,
[00:21:44.705]you have a farm that you started with
[00:21:47.551]many years ago here in Nebraska,
[00:21:49.417]and Howard, you're now workin' with your dad
[00:21:52.030]in Illinois, in Arizona, in Southern Africa.
[00:21:55.733]How has what you've learned from your own farming
[00:21:59.750]background in Nebraska and Illinois
[00:22:02.989]helped you in the other parts of the world?
[00:22:05.972]Well, it's made me realize that we can't
[00:22:08.085]think like we think like here,
[00:22:09.571]and go do it somewhere else in most cases.
[00:22:13.332]And it's amazing cause I did a few experiments
[00:22:15.735]over the last 10 or 15 years, and I'd send a few
[00:22:18.731]American farmers, US farmers over somewhere
[00:22:22.514]and they'd come back, and I remember one guy
[00:22:23.902]went to Zambia and he says, "Well, they need anhydrous."
[00:22:27.141]And I thought, "Really, you know,
[00:22:29.161]"you gotta have natural gas, you gotta have (mumbles),
[00:22:31.158]"you gotta have all this stuff."
[00:22:32.342]And those are the kind of ideas
[00:22:34.919]that don't work, and they're the kind of thinking
[00:22:37.775]that you can build things, and then they don't work
[00:22:40.840]because you don't have the rest
[00:22:41.838]of the infrastructure, or the knowledge base,
[00:22:43.661]or the training to go with it.
[00:22:45.855]And that's just one example, but it's one very clear one.
[00:22:48.560]And so, you know, one thing I learned
[00:22:50.383]is, you know, the huge advantage
[00:22:52.982]is that all farmers face similar problems.
[00:22:57.035]Now, you may have different resources
[00:22:59.577]to overcome those problems, but you know,
[00:23:02.700]it's insects, it's drought, it's too much water,
[00:23:06.263]it's, you know, a bad hybrid,
[00:23:08.400]it's whatever it is that makes you
[00:23:13.722]have to deal with something,
[00:23:15.044]that whether you're in the United States,
[00:23:16.263]or whether you're in, you know,
[00:23:18.225]some other part of the world,
[00:23:19.746]you're dealing with a lot of the same issues.
[00:23:21.406]Now, you have very different resources.
[00:23:22.927]So, that part of it is a plus,
[00:23:24.331]because you begin to understand
[00:23:26.282]and learn as you become more,
[00:23:30.534]as you get more experience in agriculture
[00:23:32.810]what some of those are, but the thing
[00:23:35.109]that I think is the most important,
[00:23:36.374]to understand that a lot of it
[00:23:38.119]doesn't just transfer, you just can't.
[00:23:40.496]We're doin' this project in Rwanda
[00:23:41.877]that scares the heck out of me.
[00:23:43.618]We are putting in 63 pivots on 1,280 hectares
[00:23:48.618]with 2,000 farmers.
[00:23:51.394]Think of that, you're gonna have
[00:23:52.358]a pivot with 60 farmers under it.
[00:23:54.621]Now, you gotta put a cooperative together
[00:23:58.534]to talk about what crops you grow.
[00:24:00.438]Then, you gotta figure out how you're gonna market it,
[00:24:02.062]you gotta figure out how you're gonna manage the water,
[00:24:03.943]the maintenance, all these things.
[00:24:05.859]Nobody's tried this, that I know of, before,
[00:24:08.146]not at this scale, so it's a little scary to figure out.
[00:24:12.570]You know, because we're gonna have
[00:24:13.693]to solve problems as we go.
[00:24:15.725]It isn't like we have, there's no book
[00:24:17.351]that say's, "This is how you do it."
[00:24:19.115]So, you know, we're good at trying things like that,
[00:24:23.411]and sometimes we make it work,
[00:24:24.657]we have to make this one work.
[00:24:27.390]But it's really taking on the challenges
[00:24:29.986]and realizing that they have to be
[00:24:31.251]very country specific, culture specific,
[00:24:34.583]environment specific, and you can't cheat on that.
[00:24:38.124]You have to understand that diversity
[00:24:41.526]is what changes the risk profile
[00:24:43.522]for a small farmer, and you can't take that away from him.
[00:24:47.378]And you have to understand
[00:24:48.990]that they don't have credit like we have,
[00:24:50.685]they don't have infrastructure like we have,
[00:24:52.345]they don't have transportation like we have.
[00:24:53.935]So, how do you solve those problems
[00:24:57.465]without thinking like a Western, US farmer?
[00:25:00.343]And so that's some of what I've learned from it.
[00:25:04.244]So, last week, and I know you were part of it again,
[00:25:07.541]like you often are, was The World Food Prize,
[00:25:10.527]in Des Moines, which is kind of
[00:25:12.744]the Nobel Prize of agriculture, so to speak.
[00:25:16.610]Named for Norman Borlaug, who is known
[00:25:19.408]as the father of the Green Revolution,
[00:25:22.360]helped to revolutionize agriculture in India,
[00:25:25.491]in particular, in the 1960's,
[00:25:27.615]through new seeds, you know development
[00:25:30.808]of agriculture around technology,
[00:25:34.174]and helping to employ technology.
[00:25:36.647]In the book, you talk about the need,
[00:25:39.653]maybe, for there being a Brown Revolution,
[00:25:42.428]instead of the Green Revolution, as we thought about it,
[00:25:44.611]what, talk about that.
[00:25:46.652]Well, one of the best secrets
[00:25:48.411]about Norman Borlaug was that he was
[00:25:50.885]a huge believer in no-till.
[00:25:53.485]He realized that you can't continue
[00:25:57.350]to destroy your soils, and think that you can continue
[00:26:00.822]to be productive.
[00:26:02.343]So, what happens in every case that I've seen,
[00:26:07.536]and it certainly has happened in this country,
[00:26:09.417]well I will take it back, it hasn't happened
[00:26:10.960]in Argentina and Brazil, and I'm still tryin'
[00:26:14.176]to figure all that out, but there's some reasons
[00:26:15.953]that make sense to me, but you know,
[00:26:19.273]people do what's easiest, they do what works
[00:26:22.639]the best with the least amount of work.
[00:26:25.611]And so, if you go look
[00:26:29.988]at the easiest way
[00:26:31.103]to increase productivity when you're growing
[00:26:32.611]30 bushels an acre, get some better seed,
[00:26:36.025]might be OPV, might be hybrid,
[00:26:39.699]throw on a little fertilizer,
[00:26:41.673]and you can triple your yields.
[00:26:43.541]So, that's great, except in Africa you have
[00:26:48.534]around 70% of all the soil's already degraded.
[00:26:52.098]You started many, millions of years ago in Africa
[00:26:57.090]with much less of a quality soil base
[00:27:00.921]across the entire continent than other places received.
[00:27:04.345]There's something we call,
[00:27:06.818]this can always be misinterpreted, the fertility belt.
[00:27:10.985]And if you go 30 degrees north,
[00:27:14.189]and you make a little jump up to 45 degrees north,
[00:27:17.008]and you take that swath all the way around the world,
[00:27:19.923]you're growing 65% of the cotton, almost 60% of the corn,
[00:27:23.870]45% of the soybeans, 45% of the wheat.
[00:27:27.609]You get my drift, it's in that little strip
[00:27:30.163]all the way around, it's the temperate climate zone,
[00:27:32.926]pretty much.
[00:27:33.888]And there's not, if you look at it in Africa,
[00:27:36.640]it's like Algeria, Egypt, Libya,
[00:27:39.485]I mean, you don't get much out of that strip.
[00:27:42.480]So, most of our research has been directed
[00:27:46.044]towards those crops, rice is a good exception to that.
[00:27:48.620]There's only 20% grown in that strip,
[00:27:50.350]and that's grown, you know, in a lot of other places.
[00:27:52.823]But we think of agriculture as this science,
[00:27:57.026]the truth is there's a lot we don't know.
[00:27:59.509]We don't know nearly as much as we think we know,
[00:28:02.516]some of the times, and so, you know,
[00:28:05.395]we have to be able to focus on
[00:28:09.308]where those crops work, but we also
[00:28:12.174]have to be able to focus on the solutions,
[00:28:15.113]the places where they don't work.
[00:28:17.271]And so, I think for us it's been
[00:28:21.321]a big challenge learning how to make that adjustment.
[00:28:24.920]Well, let's shift gears a little bit,
[00:28:27.218]and talk about risk.
[00:28:29.297]And you talk a lot about risk in the book.
[00:28:32.152]Risk of where you put your chips,
[00:28:35.218]what's gonna pay off the best,
[00:28:37.411]or, you know, have the biggest impact.
[00:28:40.209]And you actually open the book
[00:28:42.356]with a really vivid story about meeting a warlord
[00:28:45.874]in the middle of the jungle in Africa.
[00:28:48.649]You write that you also like taking on risks
[00:28:51.319]that maybe others won't.
[00:28:54.396]So, talk a little bit about how you think about risk
[00:28:59.108]in philanthropy and where you put your bets.
[00:29:02.010]Well, this is how screwed up my life is.
[00:29:05.528]I'm planting in soybeans in May sometime, a few years ago,
[00:29:10.223]and I get this phone call from a friend of mine, Shannon,
[00:29:12.267]she says, "Howard, I don't care what you're doing,
[00:29:15.808]"but you need to get on an airplane tomorrow.
[00:29:17.189]"You have to get here, because they have
[00:29:20.602]"captured the number two general, Caesar Achellum,
[00:29:25.419]"in the Lord's Resistance Army.
[00:29:26.458]"You have to get over here,
[00:29:27.943]"cause I want you to do something."
[00:29:29.836]"Shannon, I'm planting soybeans," I said,
[00:29:32.576]"I have to finish."
[00:29:33.957]And she says, "Then hurry up."
[00:29:36.116]It's like, "Well, I don't have that option," you know.
[00:29:39.053]So, I called Anne, who works for us,
[00:29:41.782]I said, "Anne, go get two sleeping bags
[00:29:44.161]"at Kmart, or somewhere, or wherever.
[00:29:47.226]"We're gonna leave tomorrow for Africa.
[00:29:48.607]"We're gonna go up to Central African Republic,
[00:29:49.907]"in South Sudan, and we're gonna sleep
[00:29:51.324]"at the forward operating base.
[00:29:52.578]"I don't know anything more than that,
[00:29:53.565]"we're just gonna go."
[00:29:54.981]And so, that's basically what we did.
[00:29:57.941]And we didn't know what we were walking into,
[00:29:59.578]but that's not that unusual for me.
[00:30:03.885]And for me, it's just, it's an opportunity
[00:30:09.457]to really see what's happening,
[00:30:11.603]and how it's happening, and who's doing what to who,
[00:30:14.366]and what the outcomes are, and that helps me figure out
[00:30:17.767]what is it that we can do, or what shouldn't we do.
[00:30:21.099]And so, you know, I go, I was, you know,
[00:30:25.859]two weeks ago, we had to apply
[00:30:28.970]to the Treasury Department, State Department
[00:30:30.769]has to approve it, to take armored vests, rifle plates
[00:30:33.579]over to Congo, cause of where we're going at the time,
[00:30:36.487]and I don't think twice about it,
[00:30:39.819]and that's probably why my wife thinks I'm a little nuts.
[00:30:43.905]But, you know, I don't,
[00:30:47.504]I just think you go where you need to go,
[00:30:50.743]to see what you need to see,
[00:30:51.787]to understand what you have to understand.
[00:30:53.785]And if that's dangerous, that doesn't stop me from doing it.
[00:30:57.523]There are places and things that I don't do, occasionally.
[00:31:03.287]But, you know, we went down to El Salvador
[00:31:06.328]about two months ago, and went into
[00:31:08.488]the high security prison, and sat and talked to
[00:31:12.272]the top MS13 leaders for a couple hours,
[00:31:15.151]and those prisons are pretty much controlled by the gangs,
[00:31:18.088]so you go in there and you're not sure
[00:31:19.231]you're gonna come out,
[00:31:20.171]or you're not sure what's gonna happen.
[00:31:22.039]But there's only one way I can talk to these guys,
[00:31:25.510]and that's to go do it.
[00:31:27.113]I can't do it any other way.
[00:31:28.471]I can't understand what these guys think,
[00:31:31.176]or what they're trying to tell the world,
[00:31:33.649]which half the time is they have their own agenda
[00:31:37.712]in how they tell it, but I mean,
[00:31:40.172]I can't do that any other way.
[00:31:41.427]I can't get it in a book, I can't watch TV,
[00:31:43.795]I want to go do it.
[00:31:45.768]So, I don't let risk stop me
[00:31:48.136]from doing things to learn, in most cases.
[00:31:52.676]And I think for us as a foundation
[00:31:55.033]risk means something a little different,
[00:31:56.507]which is we are really, in my opinion,
[00:32:01.151]the risk capital, the best risk capital
[00:32:03.473]there is in philanthropy.
[00:32:05.574]It's a huge mistake that more foundations
[00:32:08.534]don't think of it this way, and I don't mean that
[00:32:10.937]as a lecture, those foundations
[00:32:13.020]have done a lot of good work, and will continue,
[00:32:16.119]but most private family foundations
[00:32:19.858]are accountable to the IRS, period.
[00:32:22.656]They don't have a bureaucracy, they don't have
[00:32:24.072]to have a big board, if they don't want to.
[00:32:26.231]They can make decisions quickly.
[00:32:27.879]I make 10 million dollar decisions in 30 seconds sometimes.
[00:32:32.667]So, why wouldn't we take our money
[00:32:37.859]and go to the toughest places in the world
[00:32:40.925]and be willing to fail?
[00:32:43.084]You have to fail to learn how to succeed.
[00:32:45.685]The problem is when people are afraid to fail
[00:32:49.121]they look for safe bets, and they don't take risk,
[00:32:52.604]and then they feel good about what they've done.
[00:32:56.284]And that's a mistake, in the area that we operate.
[00:33:00.661]So, risk to me is something that should just go hand in hand
[00:33:05.117]with the kind of philanthropic dollars that we have,
[00:33:07.265]and other foundations have.
[00:33:09.042]And I think it's just, it's a missed opportunity
[00:33:12.216]when we don't do that.
[00:33:14.492]I was gonna say, if you don't mind.
[00:33:16.418]Yeah, go ahead.
[00:33:17.138]Risk is also a tricky thing.
[00:33:18.555]So, first of all, I think, well obviously
[00:33:20.796]my dad and I think similarly on that,
[00:33:22.491]and he hit the nail on the head
[00:33:23.458]in terms of philanthropic dollars being
[00:33:25.258]the ultimate risk capital.
[00:33:27.498]But risk is also a tricky thing
[00:33:28.844]in the sense that when you look at
[00:33:30.087]a lot of the areas where our foundation operates,
[00:33:33.559]countries that have been in conflict recently,
[00:33:35.857]or are currently in active conflict,
[00:33:38.040]you have a lot of challenges.
[00:33:38.957]Because all of a sudden programs
[00:33:40.302]can inherently become a lot less efficient,
[00:33:42.579]especially programs that are focused
[00:33:43.763]on foreign aid through government programs and otherwise.
[00:33:46.862]So, essentially you've got a 200% increase
[00:33:50.600]in the likelihood that there'll be severe hunger
[00:33:53.596]in any country that's been in a civil conflict
[00:33:55.602]in the last 10 years.
[00:33:56.985]And you also have the compounding factor
[00:33:59.202]that ongoing periods of hunger
[00:34:01.316]leads an increased likelihood in conflict, right.
[00:34:03.850]So, you've got this mitigating, or sorry,
[00:34:07.042]this continuing cycle that becomes
[00:34:08.564]very challenging throughout time.
[00:34:10.224]And one of the graphs that we use
[00:34:11.268]in the class that I teach here at UNL
[00:34:13.881]shows that as the World Food Price Index goes up,
[00:34:18.048]so when we talk about what hunger does
[00:34:19.766]to affect potential for conflict and risk,
[00:34:22.205]as that Food Price Index goes up,
[00:34:24.131]the incidences of conflict that are breaking out
[00:34:26.245]all over the world just explode.
[00:34:28.380]And you can look at it, you can chart it out,
[00:34:29.500]and it's a very fascinating thing to look at.
[00:34:31.926]And we use it cause it's a really important tool
[00:34:33.313]to talk about how you've got to have
[00:34:35.867]agricultural development, and food assitance
[00:34:37.527]under control in a lot of these places
[00:34:39.188]to mitigate enough risk to not have ongoing conflict.
[00:34:42.148]And I could go on for another 10 minutes on this,
[00:34:43.882]but again, it's another big challenge
[00:34:45.204]when you look at operating, potentially,
[00:34:47.596]government funded programs, now in a lot of cases
[00:34:50.684]only five to 10% of funding that's intended
[00:34:53.981]to help impoverished individuals
[00:34:55.781]directly reach those individuals
[00:34:57.081]in a typical government funded program.
[00:34:59.635]Only five to 10%, for a lot of reasons.
[00:35:02.084]And one of those reasons is you've got
[00:35:03.222]a lot of challenges when you're in a climate
[00:35:05.671]with a high level of risk, and a lot
[00:35:07.007]of inefficiencies that come in
[00:35:08.803]that make that challenging as well.
[00:35:10.431]Now, Ronnie I'm not trying to hijack you.
[00:35:12.741]But I gotta say something here,
[00:35:14.587]cause I think it's really a core of the issue of risk,
[00:35:19.208]and being willing to take risk.
[00:35:22.272]When you go into conflict areas
[00:35:24.153]everything is different.
[00:35:26.092]So, we met with a warlord once in Somalia
[00:35:28.890]who was the real warlord in "Black Hawk Down"
[00:35:32.641]and Shannon was with me then, and she nudges me,
[00:35:36.402]and she says, "Don't get your picture taken with this guy.
[00:35:38.410]"He's like a really bad guy."
[00:35:40.209]And so, anyway we're talkin' to him,
[00:35:43.651]and he says, "Yeah, you guys are pretty foolish."
[00:35:45.705]And I said, "What do you mean?"
[00:35:46.831]And he says, "Well, we've go this refugee camp set here,
[00:35:49.351]"and a refugee camp set here,
[00:35:50.407]"we've got a refugee camp set here.
[00:35:52.090]"We put our people in this camp,
[00:35:53.089]"you bring everything, and we let you know
[00:35:54.749]"there's a problem in this camp.
[00:35:55.585]"We move the people from here to there,
[00:35:57.152]"and we move from here to there."
[00:35:58.591]And so it's a game, and so when you look
[00:36:03.211]at how he's talkin' about it, in terms of
[00:36:06.218]the government aspect, and the conflict aspect,
[00:36:08.958]nothing is easy.
[00:36:10.235]I had a guy from SPLA that I had,
[00:36:14.496]well he was drinking beer, I was drinking coke.
[00:36:16.260]It was much better he was drinking the beer
[00:36:17.560]cause he talked more, and so, you know,
[00:36:20.810]he started telling me this story
[00:36:22.448]about how these guys would surround a village,
[00:36:25.930]and then get the word out, and you've got 500 people,
[00:36:27.881]you've got landmines around the village,
[00:36:29.749]so no one will walk out.
[00:36:30.922]They can't get water, they can't get wood,
[00:36:32.408]they can't get anything, and so
[00:36:35.160]they learned that if they would
[00:36:37.968]only take 30%, roughly, more or less,
[00:36:41.521]of the food aid that was dropped,
[00:36:43.483]then they would keep, it would work, it worked.
[00:36:45.886]They'd keep dropping food aid,
[00:36:47.499]so they could get 30%.
[00:36:49.044]So, someone has to make that decision
[00:36:50.925]knowing that the militia groups
[00:36:54.268]are getting that 30%, but if you don't give it to them,
[00:36:57.844]in the sense of letting them, well I mean they take it
[00:37:01.105]by their own, but then you have this whole village
[00:37:04.727]that's gonna starve to death.
[00:37:06.260]And one last thing is we looked
[00:37:08.698]at conflict areas, and this is really funny
[00:37:12.459]because you would never think of this,
[00:37:15.559]I don't think you would ever think of this,
[00:37:18.159]except we work, there's this great guy,
[00:37:19.657]Ed Price at Texas A&M, sorry, I know
[00:37:21.561]they beat us in football all the time.
[00:37:24.045]But he's worked a lot with this,
[00:37:26.878]in conflict areas, and he,
[00:37:29.536]they came back at one point,
[00:37:31.359]and said, "Here's what you need to do,
[00:37:32.721]"you need to focus on conflict crops."
[00:37:35.554]I said, "What are you talkin' about?"
[00:37:37.330]Ed, he said, "Well, you can burn a maize field down,
[00:37:40.755]"corn field, you can destroy soybeans easily
[00:37:45.677]"by just dragging something through it,
[00:37:47.267]"and bustin' all the pods open,
[00:37:49.044]"but you can't really destroy a cassava field,
[00:37:51.865]"or a groundnut field, or you know."
[00:37:54.221]So, we started working on this whole new concept
[00:37:56.903]of conflict crops, so when you think about conflict,
[00:38:00.165]whether it's the warlord who's taking advantage
[00:38:02.742]of people who aren't catching on
[00:38:05.528]to what he's doing, or that somebody
[00:38:08.082]who's taking advantage of food aid
[00:38:10.300]in the distribution process, or whether
[00:38:12.366]it's figuring out how people can survive conflict,
[00:38:16.740]where they live, because you give them
[00:38:18.669]better ideas, you know, all of that,
[00:38:21.409]that conflict is a complicated business.
[00:38:24.347]And it's risky, and so I just want to throw
[00:38:28.085]that conflict part in there, because I think often times
[00:38:31.300]it's something we think about, we maybe read about,
[00:38:33.982]but when you're really there seeing it,
[00:38:36.141]and you understand, you know, how challenging it is,
[00:38:39.867]you have to get creative about solutions.
[00:38:42.666]So, that's that on conflict.
[00:38:44.128]Sorry, I hijacked you.
[00:38:45.126]No, no, that's okay.
[00:38:46.241]So, you referred to earlier, a couple of times,
[00:38:49.607]Rwanda, and we have a number of Rwandan students
[00:38:52.787]here with us today.
[00:38:54.867]You're doin' a lot of work there
[00:38:56.910]in that particular, why?
[00:38:58.605]Why Rwanda?
[00:39:00.833]Well, we're, it's interesting,
[00:39:02.215]cause we're doing more work in North Kivu,
[00:39:05.245]and Democratic Republic of Congo,
[00:39:06.893]which here's the border, which has
[00:39:08.913]a long history of conflict, going back over 20 years,
[00:39:14.033]back and forth with Rwanda in different ways.
[00:39:18.309]And so, what we're trying in the DRC
[00:39:20.746]is something in one of the most difficult
[00:39:24.405]places in the world to work,
[00:39:26.425]with one of the most,
[00:39:29.830]it has no real established rule of law.
[00:39:32.407]It's got the longest standing
[00:39:34.581]UN Blue Helmet group there,
[00:39:38.238]and it's very difficult.
[00:39:39.933]Rwanda is the exact opposite.
[00:39:43.964]I got my permanent residency in South Africa
[00:39:46.054]in 2005, we've worked in 44 countries on the continent,
[00:39:49.734]I've been to every country on the continent,
[00:39:51.246]I've seen a lot of Africa, it doesn't make me an expert,
[00:39:54.543]but what it allows me to do is observe.
[00:39:57.527]There is no country on the continent of Africa
[00:40:00.545]that functions as well as Rwanda.
[00:40:03.365]It is the exact opposite of Zimbabwe,
[00:40:06.663]or Eastern DRC, or Somalia,
[00:40:10.911]and so we've worked in all those countries,
[00:40:14.319]we continue to work in some of them,
[00:40:16.442]but I wanted to try a bigger idea
[00:40:20.146]that was gonna be a lot of money for us.
[00:40:22.479]And to do that I could not go
[00:40:26.448]anywhere other than Rwanda
[00:40:27.769]because I had to have solid, dependable, reliable
[00:40:32.895]government functions and processes.
[00:40:35.094]I had to have rule of law, I had to know
[00:40:38.670]that we would be treated fairly.
[00:40:40.574]I would have to know that if we didn't agree with something,
[00:40:42.849]we could at least sit down with reasonable people
[00:40:44.936]an discuss it.
[00:40:47.980]And we had to know that the people in the country
[00:40:52.461]would embrace change.
[00:40:54.318]So, to me we looked at,
[00:40:58.690]we looked at a lot of things to start
[00:41:00.478]what we're starting there with agriculture,
[00:41:03.276]but, and we know most of the, a lot of the countries,
[00:41:07.153]not most of them, but a lot of countries on the continent,
[00:41:09.289]and Rwanda provides
[00:41:13.173]reliability, and stability,
[00:41:15.413]and predictability in a way
[00:41:16.980]that no other country provides it.
[00:41:18.710]And the hope, and one of the reasons
[00:41:20.439]we're working in DRC is there's still a group there,
[00:41:22.414]the FDLR who were responsible, in many ways,
[00:41:26.953]for a large part, it's very complicated,
[00:41:29.158]so this is oversimplifying it, but that were very involved
[00:41:32.919]in the genocide.
[00:41:35.102]You have the ADF there, who would like to overthrow Uganda,
[00:41:37.354]you have all these different things going on
[00:41:39.060]in Eastern Congo, it's this little,
[00:41:40.307]it's this one little spot,
[00:41:41.759]and you have more, you probably have
[00:41:43.046]40 different armed rebel groups in that one area.
[00:41:47.564]So, when you look at Rwanda, and you look at the future,
[00:41:53.339]you have to believe that they can
[00:41:58.076]protect their own borders, and they can develop
[00:42:01.582]a more democratic process,
[00:42:03.996]and that they will be able to preserve
[00:42:09.619]the kind of process, and government, and integrity
[00:42:13.817]that they have in those processes now.
[00:42:17.740]And there's a lot of challenges for Rwanda,
[00:42:19.691]this is not a cakewalk.
[00:42:21.537]I mean, this is not easy, there's a lot of people
[00:42:24.536]that want to see President Kagame fail,
[00:42:26.413]there's a lot of people that want to see the country fail.
[00:42:29.652]And so it's not easy, but it is the one country
[00:42:34.075]that I feel we have the best shot at having success in.
[00:42:39.745]So, Howard W.
[00:42:42.161]We've talked a little bit about you teaching the class here,
[00:42:44.680]and you referred to it earlier in one of your comments some.
[00:42:48.384]So, what aspects of what's in 40 chances
[00:42:54.042]do you think the students find most interesting,
[00:42:57.837]or learn from in your class?
[00:42:59.957]Reflect on that.
[00:43:00.810]Sure.
[00:43:02.156]Well first.
[00:43:03.147]Allen, he needs cue cards.
[00:43:05.343]Yeah, I need help with this one.
[00:43:08.633]You know, this is actually a perfect opportunity
[00:43:10.045]to say thank you to UNL, and thanks to the CASNR team,
[00:43:14.201]I know Dean Waller, and Tiffany, and groups here,
[00:43:16.209]and thanks to you Ronnie as well for,
[00:43:18.125]you know, giving me the opportunity
[00:43:19.065]to spend time with the students here in Nebraska.
[00:43:21.863]Which has just been a truly tremendous opportunity
[00:43:24.301]for me, and is just rewarding in ways
[00:43:27.836]that I could share afterwards.
[00:43:29.577]Cause it's really an amazing student group
[00:43:31.493]that you have here at UNL, so I commend you for that.
[00:43:33.815]And really pleased that President Bounds is here as well
[00:43:36.159]because I'm really excited for what's gonna be in the future
[00:43:39.410]of the entire university here, looking forward.
[00:43:41.638]So, that gives me a lot of hope,
[00:43:43.775]and I've been really impressed
[00:43:45.961]with the group that we have.
[00:43:46.746]And we've got some former students in here as well,
[00:43:48.581]so you might be able to ask them afterwards.
[00:43:51.007]A couple of things, I think one
[00:43:52.679]is there are a lot of ways that some of the stories,
[00:43:56.359]and the anecdotes in 40 chances
[00:43:58.460]come through that you may not get
[00:44:00.504]by watching it on TV, or by reading an article,
[00:44:03.743]or a magazine, or and certainly, probably not
[00:44:05.505]by reading a standard textbook.
[00:44:07.475]And so I think it really helps bring
[00:44:08.996]some of this to life in a way that's unique,
[00:44:10.818]and through and individual voice,
[00:44:12.374]most of the time through my father's voice
[00:44:14.637]that allows folks to see in, and peer underneath
[00:44:17.749]what's going on in ways they
[00:44:18.689]don't otherwise have access to that.
[00:44:20.233]So, I know that the students get excited about that.
[00:44:22.577]We had the opportunity to bring in
[00:44:23.855]a lot of guest speakers in our course as well,
[00:44:25.736]who are profiled throughout 40 chances.
[00:44:27.315]So, my dad mentioned Ed Price,
[00:44:29.415]we had Ed fly in and do a guest lecture
[00:44:32.272]earlier this year, and just again the students
[00:44:35.838]with the opportunity to meet someone like that
[00:44:38.105]and to hear the stories and the work
[00:44:39.278]that Ed's been doing his whole life,
[00:44:40.718]whether it was in Afghanistan, or in Iraq,
[00:44:42.540]or whether it's in Ghana with the foundation.
[00:44:44.618]What we're doing, it doesn't matter again,
[00:44:45.686]it's an opportunity to connect with someone
[00:44:47.625]and to learn their story in a deep way.
[00:44:49.784]And I'll say finally with 40 chances
[00:44:52.176]I think we've organized the book
[00:44:54.997]in an interesting way, it's 40 short stories
[00:44:58.119]and it's not spelled out like this,
[00:45:00.325]but as you go through the book,
[00:45:01.533]and you read these stories, you really find
[00:45:03.588]that we're talking about three categories of things.
[00:45:07.453]We're talking about people who's work
[00:45:09.194]have really inspired us, like Ed Price, or others.
[00:45:12.712]People who are, in a lot of cases, unknown heroes,
[00:45:15.928]names you've never heard of before,
[00:45:17.774]but who are dedicating their entire life,
[00:45:19.074]and their entire career to making a difference for others.
[00:45:21.976]We also talk about places that, as I referenced before,
[00:45:24.774]a lot of students aren't getting exposure to.
[00:45:26.735]Places that, where we've tried to make a difference,
[00:45:29.510]and maybe we failed, and what we've learned from that,
[00:45:31.972]and places where there is a lot of hope,
[00:45:33.910]and where a lot of progress has been made,
[00:45:35.466]and that's important.
[00:45:36.592]And then the final, kind of component of this,
[00:45:38.553]is we talk about a lot of processes
[00:45:41.085]in the world of philanthropy, and donor aid,
[00:45:43.871]ones that don't work, we focus a lot on that,
[00:45:46.564]and then ones that do work, and the ways
[00:45:48.247]that we think we can make the ones
[00:45:49.188]that don't work a lot better.
[00:45:50.174]And so, you get a whole mosaic of information
[00:45:54.005]and knowledge around international development
[00:45:55.991]and agricultural policy that I think the students
[00:45:58.707]get a real kick out of.
[00:46:00.483]And again, I think I see Amanda here,
[00:46:02.445]and there's probably others that you can talk to afterwards,
[00:46:05.011]cause they were just, they have been absolute superstars.
[00:46:07.309]Amanda, you get an A now.
[00:46:08.784]Yeah, (laughs) she did get an A.
[00:46:10.966]But no, they're really off the charts,
[00:46:13.404]the students here at UNL.
[00:46:14.762]So, I can't commend what you've done,
[00:46:16.887]you know, through INA or more, so.
[00:46:19.150]I'll tell you a little side note,
[00:46:22.234]grandstand a little bit here, Howard told me
[00:46:25.036]at the end of his first semester of teaching
[00:46:27.010]that he was more impressed with our UNL students
[00:46:29.413]than he was with the Columbia students,
[00:46:30.992]so I really love that.
[00:46:32.292]Really like that.
[00:46:32.930]Wow, you won't be going back to Columbia.
[00:46:34.486](applause)
[00:46:38.253]I can't admit that publically.
[00:46:40.017](laughing)
[00:46:42.397]So, kind of a question for both of you.
[00:46:45.010]We'll kind of begin wrappin' up our dialogue here,
[00:46:47.192]so we can dialogue with the audience
[00:46:50.454]in questions from the floor, so be thinking
[00:46:52.207]about things you might want to address to the Buffets.
[00:46:56.607]There'll be roving mics on the floor
[00:46:58.383]that will come to you and will allow you
[00:46:59.742]to articulate a question.
[00:47:01.123]Any difficult question just address to him.
[00:47:03.847]So, first kind of question for both of you
[00:47:06.620]to respond to, there are lots and lots of things
[00:47:10.382]you could've devoted your philanthropy to.
[00:47:14.120]You chose ag. and food, why?
[00:47:19.593]You said we chose agriculture?
[00:47:20.834]Ag. and food.
[00:47:23.528]Well, and I would say we've evolved
[00:47:25.269]a little bit to conflict mitigation,
[00:47:27.276]but, you know,
[00:47:31.434]my dad always from an early age
[00:47:34.394]he would always say, "Now, remember
[00:47:36.297]"stay in your circle of competence.
[00:47:38.317]"And your circle of competence is very small,"
[00:47:40.198]he would tell me.
[00:47:41.197]So, I knew I had limitations,
[00:47:44.969]and so, you know, I've had this
[00:47:49.971]incredible opportunity to be involved in agriculture,
[00:47:54.373]both from being on boards, like ADM and ConAgra,
[00:47:57.693]to farming myself.
[00:48:00.514]I mean, I got off the combine at 7:30 last night,
[00:48:03.068]or 8 o'clock and I love that.
[00:48:05.157]And so, you know, I kinda from one end to the other
[00:48:08.931]I've had this opportunity, and so that's my
[00:48:12.390]deepest, broadest base of knowledge.
[00:48:16.128]And so, if I look at one of the biggest problems
[00:48:20.749]in the world, it's people who can't feed themselves.
[00:48:25.102]And when you meet farmers
[00:48:28.109]who have literally had
[00:48:30.849]children die because they could not provide food to them,
[00:48:34.587]you look at that and you think,
[00:48:35.573]"That is absolutely, there is something wrong with that."
[00:48:38.673]Okay, as a farmer, there is something wrong with that.
[00:48:42.330]So, that just gets your attention as a farmer.
[00:48:46.208]And, it is something that is very easy
[00:48:50.851]for me to engage in,
[00:48:52.418]and get involved in, and then, you know,
[00:48:54.200]we've gone different directions with it,
[00:48:56.963]but that's the basic reason why we're
[00:48:58.798]in agriculture and conflict mitigation.
[00:49:01.340]We've done a lot in water, but the water,
[00:49:03.174]we decided we needed to really focus on
[00:49:06.355]how it impacts, and how it integrates
[00:49:09.281]with agriculture, so we don't do
[00:49:12.748]things outside of water, that is related to agriculture.
[00:49:17.139]And conflict mitigation has just evolved,
[00:49:19.299]because we started working in really tough countries,
[00:49:22.538]and whether it's Burundi, or Sierra Leone, or Liberia,
[00:49:25.057]a decade ago, when they're coming out of conflict,
[00:49:29.360]when you go to those countries,
[00:49:31.381]and you meet people that have
[00:49:34.886]experienced just horrendous things in their life,
[00:49:39.461]and you think, "How can other people do this
[00:49:41.584]"to other people?"
[00:49:43.675]You can't go home from those experiences
[00:49:47.018]without saying, "That's a place I want to work.
[00:49:51.302]"Those are people I want to work with."
[00:49:55.098]And so, as I had those experiences in those countries,
[00:49:59.718]it really became hard for me not to go back.
[00:50:03.828]And, I took Howie to Sierra Leone one time,
[00:50:07.125]and he had a few experiences there
[00:50:10.572]he'd never had.
[00:50:11.966]And, you know, I always used to wonder
[00:50:15.286]when I was, you know, you ask him,
[00:50:16.609]he started travelling at 13, I used to always wonder,
[00:50:18.548]he would come home sometimes,
[00:50:19.628]he wouldn't talk to me much.
[00:50:21.194]And I wasn't sure why, and I was worried
[00:50:24.074]that he was seeing too much, too fast, too difficult,
[00:50:27.754]you know, too extreme, and then, you know,
[00:50:31.167]Devon, my wife, would say,
[00:50:32.536]"No, he's talkin' to me a little bit, he's okay."
[00:50:34.777]But it's a tough world,
[00:50:39.182]and it really angers me
[00:50:41.574]when some, like The World Bank,
[00:50:44.419]you know, in 2008 they went from,
[00:50:46.600]"Well, you're poor if you live on a dollar a day."
[00:50:51.094]And then, in 2008 somehow they decided,
[00:50:53.067]"You're poor if you live on $1.25.
[00:50:55.528]And then some economist sits there
[00:50:57.247]in a room somewhere and decides,
[00:50:58.488]"Well, this time we're gonna come out,
[00:51:01.205]"we're gonna use a $1.90, and man,
[00:51:03.063]"do we have a good news story because
[00:51:05.071]"the world got smaller for hungry people."
[00:51:08.114]I will tell you that the day they put that report out,
[00:51:12.200]and I'm in Congo, people are not eating better,
[00:51:14.418]they don't have more money to spend.
[00:51:16.600]It is really irritating to watch people
[00:51:20.698]take statistics and turn them into something
[00:51:23.693]so they can feel good, or so you can feel
[00:51:26.375]that you succeeded at something.
[00:51:28.174]The truth is it's a very tough world.
[00:51:30.334]There's 4 billion people that live out there
[00:51:33.050]that don't live like we live.
[00:51:35.116]That don't have clean water, that don't have enough food,
[00:51:38.843]that have kids dying from malnutrition,
[00:51:41.560]you know, whatever it is.
[00:51:42.779]And I have people who tell me,
[00:51:44.264]my friends, they say, "Howie, you have
[00:51:45.855]"to quit talkin' like that.
[00:51:47.654]"That's a bad story, we did that in the 80's.
[00:51:49.779]"That's over, we're gonna be positive now."
[00:51:52.982]And it's like, you can change the narrative
[00:51:55.305]anyway you want, and you can find
[00:51:57.882]pockets in the world where absolutely
[00:51:59.786]things have improved, no question about that.
[00:52:02.525]I would be the first to say that,
[00:52:04.998]but there are too many places in the world
[00:52:07.366]where things have not improved.
[00:52:09.758]And that's why we end up working
[00:52:12.556]because somebody should be there,
[00:52:15.248]and many other people are there,
[00:52:16.642]it's not just us, in some cases we're pretty lonely.
[00:52:20.206]In North Kivu, there's not a lot of people working there,
[00:52:23.004]but it is really frustrating to watch
[00:52:27.485]people use statistics to define poverty.
[00:52:30.038]I have to, I'll just give you one story.
[00:52:32.395]So, I'm in Beni, North Kivu,
[00:52:37.538]and I meet this farmer,
[00:52:39.129]and he says, "You know," and this is through a translator,
[00:52:44.584]and he says, "You know, some people
[00:52:46.889]"used to tell me that I lived on a dollar a day,
[00:52:48.851]"and I was really poor."
[00:52:50.836]He says, "I don't know if I lived on a dollar a day,
[00:52:52.334]"I don't know what I lived on, I couldn't tell you."
[00:52:54.934]And that's the other part that we forget,
[00:52:56.246]that this is not always defined
[00:52:57.975]in monetary terms like we would define it.
[00:53:00.936]And he says, "Now, cause of The Cacao Project,"
[00:53:04.765]and I was up there looking at something
[00:53:05.957]we were involved with that,
[00:53:07.558]he says, "they tell me I make five dollars a day."
[00:53:12.204]And actually I think he said seven dollars a day,
[00:53:15.991]and he says, "Now they tell me I'm not in poverty anymore."
[00:53:22.077]And I said, "Well, how do you feel about that?"
[00:53:24.283]And he says, "Well, things are a lot different."
[00:53:25.641]He says, "I can buy my wife a dress,
[00:53:29.275]"I can send my kids to school,
[00:53:31.783]"and we eat at least two meals a day, sometimes three."
[00:53:35.857]So, there's no question that his life improved,
[00:53:38.980]but he can't put that in a monetary term.
[00:53:42.382]He can't tell you whether that's a dollar,
[00:53:44.947]or a change at three dollars, or where it changed.
[00:53:48.127]And so, I always think about him
[00:53:50.763]when I hear this, you know, these magic numbers,
[00:53:53.526]and these magic statistics that make something
[00:53:55.627]different in the world, just like when Ghana in 2010
[00:53:58.726]decided to increase their GDP by 60%.
[00:54:01.164]They went from a low-income country
[00:54:02.906]to a middle-income country.
[00:54:05.564]Go ask somebody on the street
[00:54:06.784]if their life changed that day,
[00:54:08.281]it didn't change, okay.
[00:54:11.183]So, I think we have to be really careful
[00:54:13.981]about how we view statistics
[00:54:17.359]and the stories that people want to tell,
[00:54:20.064]and how they want to present that.
[00:54:22.897]Because there are a lot of people in the world
[00:54:26.111]that should be living in better conditions,
[00:54:29.862]and it takes a lot of resources,
[00:54:31.360]and a lot of effort to find those solutions.
[00:54:34.093]So, you'll find if you talk long enough
[00:54:35.927]with my dad, he is very much a realist.
[00:54:38.046]That I talk too much, right?
[00:54:39.427]No.
[00:54:40.113](laughing)
[00:54:41.296]No, he's very much a realist,
[00:54:42.411]but I think that in keeping in the name
[00:54:44.570]of the conference, and the subtitle of our book,
[00:54:47.780]that it's also okay to be realistic about hope,
[00:54:50.659]and, you know, not to be overly positive,
[00:54:52.393]and to really talk about where there's opportunity
[00:54:54.494]to make change.
[00:54:55.505]And when you talk about the opportunity
[00:54:57.304]to invest in agriculture, well what that really is
[00:54:59.463]for me too is, and something for my father as well,
[00:55:01.727]is an opportunity to invest in women.
[00:55:03.793]When you look at the fact that 80%
[00:55:05.813]of the food grown in Africa by small holder farmers
[00:55:09.087]is being grown by women,
[00:55:10.503]and 70% of the food in Latin America,
[00:55:12.291]and 60% of the food in Asia, all being grown by women.
[00:55:14.764]When you talk about advancing agriculture,
[00:55:17.213]you're really talking about gender empowerment,
[00:55:19.651]and gender inclusion, and looking at
[00:55:21.369]a lot of human rights issues around women
[00:55:23.447]and the challenges that they face around the world.
[00:55:25.409]So, you've got three quarters of the world's population
[00:55:27.371]that is, the three quarters of the world's population
[00:55:30.691]that is poor is living in rural areas
[00:55:33.362]where agriculture is the primary activity.
[00:55:35.509]So, we have an endless amount of work
[00:55:37.901]in front of us to do, but we also know
[00:55:39.607]that by focusing on agricultural development,
[00:55:42.869]which by the way is three times more effetive
[00:55:44.506]at permanently lifting people out of poverty
[00:55:46.526]than any other kind of development.
[00:55:47.988]By focusing on agriculture development,
[00:55:49.730]we know we are directing our resources
[00:55:51.924]in an area that's gonna make the biggest difference
[00:55:53.707]for the biggest number of people,
[00:55:55.030]especially the most disenfranchised people
[00:55:56.992]that you have all over the world.
[00:55:58.187]And so that's part of, kind of the hopeful end
[00:55:59.709]of the realistic message that, you know,
[00:56:01.589]we can continue to do a lot better.
[00:56:04.131]He's always cleaning up after me.
[00:56:05.885](laughing)
[00:56:08.288]One last question, and then we'll
[00:56:10.133]begin our questions from the floor.
[00:56:12.931]In the book, you talk about there being
[00:56:16.332]a wide spectrum of types of agriculture.
[00:56:20.466]Organic production systems, natural production systems,
[00:56:25.190]you know, high intensity, low intensity,
[00:56:27.721]small holder, you know, there's a wide, wide spectrum
[00:56:31.053]of types of agricultural production,
[00:56:33.281]and you talk about how they're all important,
[00:56:36.102]and yet you talk about the challenge out there, ahead,
[00:56:41.037]in terms of you feeding a growing global population,
[00:56:44.786]you know, the things we often talk about.
[00:56:47.700]And you contrast a little bit there,
[00:56:50.359]those different types, talk about that a little bit,
[00:56:53.585]if you want to, in our last.
[00:56:55.316]Get your questions ready.
[00:56:58.276]Well, I think that every,
[00:57:00.795]well I won't say every, but a lot of different types
[00:57:03.175]of farming systems have something to offer,
[00:57:05.984]and truthfully, the ones that will end up
[00:57:09.304]finding to be the most successful
[00:57:10.837]are ones that have probably merged things
[00:57:12.381]from all of them, or many of them.
[00:57:16.340]I remember, you know, calling a guy
[00:57:18.463]named Tim Lasalle, he used to be,
[00:57:20.617]he was the CEO of the Rodale Institute,
[00:57:23.044]which is all organic, and he made some comment
[00:57:25.754]in a farm magazine where they quoted him,
[00:57:27.206]and I call him up, and I said,
[00:57:29.086]"I don't believe you're growing
[00:57:29.945]"220 bushel of corn with no nitrogen,
[00:57:31.989]"with no synthetic inputs."
[00:57:34.310]"Come back and visit me."
[00:57:35.587]So, I went back there, and I got a lesson,
[00:57:38.687]I learned a lot, and I realized
[00:57:40.730]that I didn't think that you could feed the world
[00:57:44.166]on organic agriculture, but the truth is
[00:57:47.626]most, and there are people who would
[00:57:50.052]argue with me on that, and I'd be glad to debate them,
[00:57:51.944]but the most small holder farmers in Africa
[00:57:56.286]are organic by default, not because
[00:57:58.434]they're organic like we define it,
[00:57:59.769]not because they want to pay more
[00:58:01.221]for certain kinds of food, grown a certain way,
[00:58:02.996]they are just, they don't have inputs,
[00:58:04.773]they don't have a lot of things that we have.
[00:58:07.292]So, it's actually a huge opportunity
[00:58:09.103]in Africa to try to develop that agriculture differently
[00:58:13.039]than was developed in India under the Green Revolution,
[00:58:15.094]and it was developed in this country,
[00:58:17.032]and that is to take where they're at,
[00:58:21.455]and include really important parts
[00:58:23.510]of what I call biological farming,
[00:58:25.344]you can call it organic, you can call it whatever you want,
[00:58:27.388]and incorporate that and combine it
[00:58:29.987]with the kind of farming that we know here.
[00:58:32.763]Not they're all gonna have big John Deere tractors,
[00:58:34.539]or something like that, but I just mean,
[00:58:36.001]in terms of, the way we do it.
[00:58:38.544]And so, I think the most successful farming system
[00:58:41.237]long-term will be one that meets
[00:58:44.244]the three criteria that FAO puts out there,
[00:58:46.577]which is minimal soil disturbance,
[00:58:48.818]permanent soil cover, and crop rotation,
[00:58:52.022]and then you can put a whole lot of other things in there,
[00:58:53.461]like nutrient management, and water management,
[00:58:55.423]and all those things, but if I'm a small farmer
[00:58:59.640]in Africa, I have to really worry about
[00:59:01.634]my half acre, or whatever it is,
[00:59:03.317]because pretty soon there won't be enough
[00:59:05.198]trees to go slash and burn to go
[00:59:06.800]to the next half acre when I've depleted my half acre here.
[00:59:11.235]There won't be enough, and there's a lot of countries
[00:59:12.639]where there's not enough today.
[00:59:14.543]In fact, I would argue in most cases
[00:59:15.983]there aren't, there is not.
[00:59:17.863]So, what do you do?
[00:59:20.243]You have to increase productivity,
[00:59:22.565]but you want to do it in a way
[00:59:24.957]that you feel that in 10 generations
[00:59:29.217]you're still going to be able to be productive.
[00:59:31.701]You can't do that by simply using synthetic inputs,
[00:59:35.242]and I don't believe you can do it globally
[00:59:37.982]with strictly organic agriculture.
[00:59:40.280]I think it will take the best parts of both
[00:59:43.380]and you can do it at scale,
[00:59:45.261]you just have to change your behavior.
[00:59:46.781]You just have to get better at what you do,
[00:59:48.453]you have to be willing to change.
[00:59:49.800]You have to be willing to adopt,
[00:59:51.703]and get better educated, and take a,
[00:59:54.002]you know, take a little time to learn
[00:59:55.743]how to do something different.
[00:59:58.123]So, you know, somebody comes up to me,
[01:00:00.863]30 seconds.
[01:00:01.513]that's a friend of mine in Illinois that says,
[01:00:03.278]"Well, I tried no-till at one time, it didn't work."
[01:00:06.052]And I said to him, I said,
[01:00:08.479]I don't think I put this in the book,
[01:00:09.500]cause Howie wouldn't let me, I said,
[01:00:10.475]"Well, is that what you said to your wife,
[01:00:12.112]"you were married, you tried
[01:00:13.018]"it one year and it didn't work?"
[01:00:14.295]I mean, you know, come on, I mean
[01:00:15.676]there's all sorts of stuff that doesn't work in one year,
[01:00:17.998]and nothing on a farm works in one year.
[01:00:19.716]It works the same every year, so I said,
[01:00:21.516]"Come on," and I've had farmers
[01:00:25.364]who, you know, have tried no-till,
[01:00:26.972]and they'll say, "Well, I did, I tried to
[01:00:28.156]"no-till my corn, and my soybeans."
[01:00:30.419]So, I said, "What kind of culture
[01:00:31.220]"do you put on the planter?"
[01:00:33.977]"You didn't tell me I had to put a culture on the planter."
[01:00:36.078]"Well, of course, you have to have
[01:00:37.054]"the right tools to do the job."
[01:00:39.074]So, you know, this is a tough long-term challenge,
[01:00:42.754]but farmers in Africa actually,
[01:00:46.434]if we can not, I mean, giving fertilizer
[01:00:50.230]to a small holder farmer who's poor
[01:00:52.296]is like giving heroin to somebody.
[01:00:53.794]I mean, it's like, it's addictive.
[01:00:55.454]It's like they're hooked on it,
[01:00:56.569]they can't, they're never gonna change.
[01:00:59.169]So, what we really need to do is go into it thinking,
[01:01:00.934]"Okay, let's think more long-term,
[01:01:02.535]"let's make sure that we give them
[01:01:05.635]"all the options, and we teach them how
[01:01:07.715]"to have a broader approach to agriculture."
[01:01:11.184]So, I mean that's what I hope we can do.
[01:01:15.300]Howard.
[01:01:15.997]Well, I'll just follow up by saying,
[01:01:17.401]you know, you're first question to me
[01:01:18.655]was kind of what, growing up and travelling with my dad,
[01:01:21.592]what did that really expose me to,
[01:01:23.148]and allow me to observe and grow?
[01:01:24.750]We spent countless numbers of days, and hours
[01:01:27.850]with farmers all over the world,
[01:01:30.810]and learning about their challenges,
[01:01:32.214]and their hopes.
[01:01:34.467]And I think one thing that was always
[01:01:36.429]so interesting for me was when we would come home,
[01:01:38.147]and we would come back to Illinois,
[01:01:39.272]or come back to Nebraska, and we would
[01:01:41.386]go and go on our own farm, and start harvesting,
[01:01:45.530]or planting, whatever was going on at that time of the year,
[01:01:47.747]and the one thing that always seemed so interesting
[01:01:50.568]about coming back and being in,
[01:01:52.507]either Paignton, Illinois, or being in Takamah,
[01:01:54.666]was really having that feeling,
[01:01:57.824]and sense of community when you would get home,
[01:01:59.925]and you would be out in the agricultural operations
[01:02:03.547]that's going on anywhere else.
[01:02:04.627]And so, as you talk about
[01:02:06.611]the importance of rural communities,
[01:02:08.168]and this being a rural futures conference,
[01:02:10.327]you know, I think that, probably,
[01:02:11.731]the greatest asset, or greatest strength
[01:02:13.310]that rural communities have across the country,
[01:02:15.725]and part of what makes the fabric of America so great
[01:02:17.791]is the fact that you have got these senses
[01:02:19.962]of community that's all over the place.
[01:02:22.447]Where people will step up and lend a helping hand,
[01:02:25.140]or watch out for someone else,
[01:02:26.463]and it just creates a sense of family
[01:02:28.843]that I think doesn't necessarily exist
[01:02:30.688]in a lot of urban neighborhoods,
[01:02:32.209]or other places around the country
[01:02:33.487]that really benefits, you know,
[01:02:36.170]the values and the principles of the United States,
[01:02:38.966]and what I think will continue to make us stand out,
[01:02:41.706]you know, for years to come.
[01:02:42.936]I have to say that this conference,
[01:02:45.688]and conferences like it, are probably
[01:02:47.812]the most important thing happening
[01:02:49.252]in America today.
[01:02:52.833]We built this country
[01:02:55.964]from rural America up.
[01:02:59.621]A lot of the population today
[01:03:01.502]wouldn't even know what you're talking about
[01:03:03.463]if you said that to them.
[01:03:06.214]Chuck Hassebrook we used to have
[01:03:08.711]some great conversations, he would challenge me
[01:03:11.172]on things, and give me ideas,
[01:03:14.516]and the truth is, if there's one thing in America
[01:03:18.115]that I watch, and I have watched
[01:03:20.238]for the last three decades, with a really disappointing view
[01:03:24.976]cause America is an incredible country.
[01:03:27.096]This is, you know, a great country,
[01:03:29.799]but we have allowed rural America to slip,
[01:03:34.338]and we've done that in policies in Washington,
[01:03:37.809]we've done it with different presidents
[01:03:39.527]that have allowed consolidation to take place
[01:03:41.884]without really the proper care,
[01:03:45.262]and I'm not targeting that at any
[01:03:47.967]particular company, or industry.
[01:03:50.904]It's just happened over time.
[01:03:53.109]And when your school closes
[01:03:55.861]in your town,
[01:04:00.126]that hurts, and when your tax PACE get's eroded,
[01:04:04.283]you don't get the same services
[01:04:06.128]that you used to have.
[01:04:08.043]And the political game
[01:04:12.209]is stacked against us
[01:04:14.171]in many ways in Washington.
[01:04:16.087]So, when I say this is one of the most important things
[01:04:19.789]happening in America, I'm serious
[01:04:21.380]because rural America has to survive and stay strong
[01:04:26.376]and it's the people sitting in this room,
[01:04:28.671]and the people coming to this conference
[01:04:30.470]that can do that, nobody else is gonna do it for us.
[01:04:34.352]That's a great ending.
[01:04:35.089]Here, here.
[01:04:35.557](applause)
[01:04:40.815]So, I know we have mics at the,
[01:04:44.275]on the sides, so if you would get your hand up
[01:04:47.306]in the air if you have a question
[01:04:48.768]that you'd like to address to our speakers,
[01:04:53.079]please get the mic here.
[01:04:54.762]Chuck Hassebrook over here on the center.
[01:04:59.812]Chuck, you can't ask us a trick question,
[01:05:01.786]don't do that.
[01:05:04.345]So, they won't give you a microhpone.
[01:05:05.851]Just in case you need it.
[01:05:07.080]Yell it out, I'll hear it.
[01:05:08.247](mumbles),
[01:05:11.294]well I shouldn't say (mumbles), but
[01:05:13.261]I was just interested in your thoughts on
[01:05:15.884]the most successful investments you've made
[01:05:17.916]in agricultural development in a developing world,
[01:05:20.783]what is it?
[01:05:21.658]What have you done in investing in agriculture
[01:05:24.479]that's really worked?
[01:05:25.552]So, to give our viewers, make sure they hear
[01:05:28.569]the question, the question is
[01:05:32.005]what is the most successful
[01:05:34.502]investment in ag. development that you've seen work?
[01:05:36.916]Is that right Chuck?
[01:05:38.077]Yep.
[01:05:39.656]I would actually say not much.
[01:05:41.502]After several hundred million dollars,
[01:05:43.916]I would say we've not had the kind of success
[01:05:46.423]we should have.
[01:05:47.097]Now, to be fair about that, we work
[01:05:49.442]in really, really tough places most of the time.
[01:05:52.136]It's why we've changed gears and decided
[01:05:53.997]to try something different in Rwanda.
[01:05:56.529]So, if you wanted to ask me what I think
[01:05:58.595]in the future will be our biggest success,
[01:06:01.091]it's gonna be the students sitting here.
[01:06:03.134]It's gonna be the kids,
[01:06:06.976]anybody under 30 is a kid to me,
[01:06:08.869]well under 40 now, but Allen, that doesn't count you,
[01:06:13.808]but, you know, it's that generation,
[01:06:16.166]it's that generation that is going to figure out
[01:06:19.405]how you solve the biggest problems we've ever faced.
[01:06:21.946]And have we had a lot of problems that have been reduced,
[01:06:25.627]and a lot of things solved, absolutely we have.
[01:06:28.425]But that doesn't take away from
[01:06:30.084]what a lot of people face today.
[01:06:32.140]And so, I think it's the next generation
[01:06:34.844]that's gonna come up, and you know,
[01:06:40.028]they're gonna face some tough challenges,
[01:06:41.781]but I think, you know, these kids are here,
[01:06:44.765]sorry, I don't mean kids like, you know,
[01:06:46.401]I know you're young adults, but you know,
[01:06:48.131]they're here to learn about agriculture.
[01:06:50.488]And we're gonna send a couple hundred
[01:06:53.588]young adults here, and hopefully more,
[01:06:57.209]and I will say the university has done,
[01:06:59.670]this university has done a better job
[01:07:02.770]of any other university we would talk to
[01:07:05.149]to make this program work, and we're really proud
[01:07:07.483]to do it with Nebraska, and they really showed leadership,
[01:07:11.965]they really, you know, stepped up to the plate
[01:07:14.228]when we had to figure out how do we do this,
[01:07:15.993]and how do we do it the most efficient way,
[01:07:17.954]in the best way, and with a number of students.
[01:07:21.252]So, when I look at it, I just think,
[01:07:25.210]"That's where my hope is for the future."
[01:07:27.857]Is that it took us a lot of money,
[01:07:31.143]I mean, if you would've asked me 10 years ago
[01:07:33.493]would I fund 200 or 300 students at any university,
[01:07:36.917]I woulda said, "Absolutely not!"
[01:07:38.996]Okay, I wouldn't have done it.
[01:07:40.656]Today, it's probably one of the cornerstones
[01:07:43.859]of what we hope will be successful,
[01:07:45.891]well it isn't probably, it is one of the cornerstones
[01:07:48.213]of what we hope is successful in Rwanda,
[01:07:50.674]as a model that can be used and replicated.
[01:07:54.633]I mean, what we've got to do is get one country
[01:07:57.454]that, in Africa, that get's most of it right,
[01:08:02.028]and we have to keep working at that.
[01:08:04.303]And then, you know, one of those components
[01:08:07.600]has to be agriculture.
[01:08:09.121]It cannot be successful, there is no country in the world
[01:08:12.604]that is independent, and feeds itself,
[01:08:16.481]and has done well without agriculture being strong.
[01:08:20.382]And so, that is the key at the end of the day.
[01:08:23.818]I mean, you can't, there's a whole lot of other pieces
[01:08:26.198]to it as you know, but I mean,
[01:08:27.243]that is absolutely a key.
[01:08:29.871]I think there's a question here with Amber.
[01:08:32.896]Hi, thank you both for coming,
[01:08:36.298]I come from Scottsbluff, Nebraska
[01:08:38.457]and question for both of you,
[01:08:40.535]the Howard G. Buffett Foundation,
[01:08:42.439]one of the focuses is on water security,
[01:08:45.120]recently in California with the drought,
[01:08:47.674]Nestle Coporation has, sort of, gotten
[01:08:49.915]itself in trouble for pumping water
[01:08:52.503]for the resale market, and people have started
[01:08:55.034]a conversation on whether you see water
[01:08:58.122]as a commodity to be sold,
[01:09:01.176]or is it a human right, or is it a grey area
[01:09:05.552]in between, and what do we do going forward?
[01:09:09.487]It's a tragedy of the commons,
[01:09:10.590]but it's, yeah, more appropriate,
[01:09:12.482]I mean, and I think that, boy,
[01:09:16.423]I could get into a lot of trouble
[01:09:17.410]answering this, in a couple of different ways,
[01:09:18.850]but I'll say
[01:09:23.128]simply that like our
[01:09:27.475]challenges with fresh air that we're facing today,
[01:09:29.588]you know, we,
[01:09:31.115]gosh I don't know how to say this politically correct.
[01:09:33.785]I'll turn over to you dad.
[01:09:34.969](laughing)
[01:09:37.436]Yup, okay.
[01:09:39.248]Well done.
[01:09:40.240]He's the safe one in the family, you can see that.
[01:09:43.759]He wasn't with me three weeks ago.
[01:09:46.185]That's true.
[01:09:47.114]I think that there's a certain amount
[01:09:50.330]of human greed that always
[01:09:55.113]finds its place, no matter what you're talking about.
[01:09:58.862]So, there will be people and companies
[01:10:02.798]who find a way to make water a profit center,
[01:10:08.330]and they will find ways to exploit it
[01:10:12.195]in situations like you're talking about
[01:10:13.948]where it's becoming a commodity
[01:10:18.702]because you attach a financial value to it.
[01:10:23.090]And that will make it a commodity.
[01:10:27.290]There's not a lot that I can say
[01:10:32.041]about how you solve it, except I would say
[01:10:34.247]that, you know, a little different situation
[01:10:36.824]is in Des Moines, Iowa where the water company
[01:10:40.783]is suing farmers, and that's fixable.
[01:10:44.022]Okay, we can't make it rain when we want it to rain,
[01:10:46.146]unless you could by a pivot, but you can't,
[01:10:48.270]you know, the world doesn't operate under pivot.
[01:10:50.802]But it does allow, that is fixable,
[01:10:55.062]if we change our farming behavior,
[01:10:57.546]and there's 50 different things
[01:11:00.367]you can do that work.
[01:11:02.387]So, where it becomes
[01:11:06.378]a regulatory issue
[01:11:07.503]farmers will change faster,
[01:11:10.881]and I would hope that we can change it
[01:11:12.914]as farmers without regulation.
[01:11:15.456]Because that never works the best.
[01:11:17.661]But, you know, in California,
[01:11:19.762]it's an extreme example right now.
[01:11:22.538]I mean, can you imagine if people
[01:11:24.813]started boxing up oxygen and selling that.
[01:11:27.599]I mean, it's just.
[01:11:29.751]He tried that once when he was a kid,
[01:11:31.186]but it didn't work.
[01:11:33.247]He said, "I have a better idea than lemonade stands,"
[01:11:35.186]but it didn't work.
[01:11:35.893]So, I see lots of hands, there's a question
[01:11:37.043]waiting at the very top, and then we'll come back down,
[01:11:39.272]like Roger, you had one, and Richard, you had one.
[01:11:41.826]Got a two-part question.
[01:11:43.684]In America, 40% of what we plant
[01:11:47.062]never makes it to the table, of that 40%,
[01:11:50.091]20% never makes it off the farm in the first place.
[01:11:53.690]First, how do we address that issue in America?
[01:11:57.950]And number two, have you seen
[01:11:59.901]those same types of numbers internationally?
[01:12:03.721]What was the first part of the question?
[01:12:04.626]Well, the first part of... Food waste.
[01:12:05.812]What?
[01:12:06.421]Food waste.
[01:12:06.852]Yeah, food waste, and everything that.
[01:12:08.709]Well, the first thing when I talk about food waste
[01:12:10.474]is I think about we have a totally failing H-2A system,
[01:12:13.690]which means we have a totally failing system
[01:12:16.708]to bring in people from out of this country
[01:12:19.947]to work, and it has gotten caught up
[01:12:21.491]in emotion, and politics, that is gonna hurt
[01:12:24.381]this country long-term, in a big way.
[01:12:28.061]We decided to,
[01:12:33.070]this is just me,
[01:12:33.744]I gotta learn it the hard way.
[01:12:35.252]So, we took our farm in Arizona,
[01:12:38.027]and I said, "Doug you gotta hire two guys
[01:12:40.953]"through the H-2A program.
[01:12:43.135]"I wanna really understand it."
[01:12:45.515]"Yeah, that's no big deal."
[01:12:46.734]Well, he would tell you it's a big deal now.
[01:12:49.636]So, he first goes to the state,
[01:12:52.794]and gets a permit, and I'm gonna answer
[01:12:54.928]the heart of your question, but this is a big part
[01:12:57.757]of the problem.
[01:13:00.250]And he gets a permit, then he goes
[01:13:01.419]to the federal government, he gets a permit,
[01:13:03.358]then he goes back to the state,
[01:13:04.379]and they tell him he has to advertise
[01:13:06.179]for US workers in California, Nevada,
[01:13:09.975]New Mexico, and Arizona.
[01:13:12.082]So, he advertises, nobody answers.
[01:13:14.357]So, he wants them for September 1st,
[01:13:16.261]now the key is that we don't know if we can,
[01:13:18.508]we need them from September 1st to September 30th,
[01:13:20.748]but the way our system works is
[01:13:22.246]those are the dates you hire them,
[01:13:23.488]those are the dates you get them.
[01:13:24.846]So, if I were growing cantaloupes, and oranges,
[01:13:27.551]and a bunch of other stuff, and I hire them for cantaloupes,
[01:13:30.209]and they come, and my cantaloupes aren't ready,
[01:13:31.707]but I need to pick my oranges,
[01:13:33.448]I can't take my cantaloupe guys from the H-2A,
[01:13:35.782]and put them on the oranges cause they don't allow it.
[01:13:38.091]So, it's got these very rigid rules,
[01:13:41.308]so then I asked, I called them up the other day,
[01:13:43.502]I said, "Doug, you never told me what happened
[01:13:47.701]"on the H-2A guys."
[01:13:48.935]And he says, "God, I was hopin' you would forget about it."
[01:13:51.814]I said, "Well, I'm not gonna forget about it."
[01:13:53.149]He goes, "September 1st came,
[01:13:56.771]"and I called the guy back that was
[01:14:00.288]"gonna bring them to us in the US."
[01:14:02.215]And I said, "Where are our two guys?"
[01:14:04.893]And not a single applicant from a United States citizen,
[01:14:07.741]okay, in four states, where we advertised,
[01:14:10.377]and then, but if you have two people
[01:14:13.832]from somewhere else,
[01:14:16.042]and on September 4th, three days into the job,
[01:14:20.430]an American shows up, you have to send
[01:14:21.818]one of those people home, hire the American,
[01:14:23.698]and then when they quit in two days
[01:14:24.813]because it's too hard, you're screwed.
[01:14:28.156]Okay, great system,
[01:14:29.776]so now,
[01:14:34.140]it's like, "Well, where are our two guys?"
[01:14:35.662]And Doug says, "Well, I called the guy
[01:14:37.879]"that was gonna bring them through to us,
[01:14:41.606]"and he says, "Well, who's your agent in Mexico?"
[01:14:44.125]"and Doug says, "I didn't know I needed an agent in Mexico."
[01:14:46.922]"So, we're gonna start over and try it again next year."
[01:14:48.826]But anyway, it is so cumbersome to legally hire people,
[01:14:53.482]that if you look across the state,
[01:14:55.049]and here's what people don't realize,
[01:14:57.162]from every state in this country
[01:15:02.554]uses labor on the farm.
[01:15:06.432]Whether it's onions in Georgia,
[01:15:09.600]or cherries in Michigan,
[01:15:12.213]or sugar beets, or something different
[01:15:16.399]in western Nebraska, I mean, every state uses it.
[01:15:20.381]So, when I think about agricultural waste,
[01:15:23.921]I don't think about me running a combine
[01:15:25.883]across cornfields and soybeans,
[01:15:27.880]cause I get most of that, and if you treat it right,
[01:15:30.643]it gets to where it's goin'.
[01:15:32.164]I think about the amount of waste
[01:15:34.624]that comes from the fact that we cannot
[01:15:37.121]get our act together, and I'm not gonna say
[01:15:39.779]on immigration, cause that's a way more complicated issue,
[01:15:41.880]but we cannot get our act together on how to bring in
[01:15:46.536]qualified, skilled labor into this country
[01:15:50.506]to support our US farmers when they need them.
[01:15:53.524]And it's a big problem, and it's only gonna get bigger
[01:15:55.707]because I don't see anybody with the guts
[01:15:57.785]to stand up and fix it.
[01:15:59.433]So, that's my answer because until you fix
[01:16:02.613]the political system, and the emotions
[01:16:06.073]that have created a whole different environment
[01:16:08.628]and dynamics for bringing in that labor,
[01:16:10.589]you're gonna continue to see huge amounts
[01:16:13.131]of waste across this country,
[01:16:14.490]and most of it's in fruits and vegetables.
[01:16:16.046]It's not in the cornfields in Nebraska.
[01:16:18.170]True, now that was a two part question.
[01:16:20.666]Second part was on the international side,
[01:16:22.187]and the quick answer is yes.
[01:16:24.171]The amounts of food spoilage, rotting,
[01:16:26.122]and hunger that exists because of loss of food
[01:16:29.001]is off the charts.
[01:16:30.244]And that is corn, and beans.
[01:16:31.590]Yeah, that's everything.
[01:16:32.478]That's everything.
[01:16:33.032]I don't have the number off the top of my head,
[01:16:34.283]but one short anecdote is in chapter 29
[01:16:38.081]we talk about the work we did in Afghanistan,
[01:16:39.916]and one of them was some just totally rudimentary
[01:16:44.373]cool dry-storage, dry-storage it sounds like a refrigerator.
[01:16:47.712]No, it's just a hole in the ground that's covered
[01:16:49.813]for potatoes, for a potato farmer in Bamyan province,
[01:16:52.146]and completely transformed their life.
[01:16:54.828]Completely transformed their life.
[01:16:56.151]One little hole in the ground that's covered
[01:16:57.231]with just the right things to make sure
[01:16:59.059]that the potatoes don't spoil.
[01:17:00.475]So, the bar is extremely low when it comes
[01:17:02.843]to addressing food spoilage on the international side.
[01:17:06.419]And that's before you get
[01:17:07.440]to the waste on the plate,
[01:17:10.412]That's step one, and then you have
[01:17:12.119]the entire value chain.
[01:17:12.888]In the Western world.
[01:17:13.700]Yeah, we don't even have time for that.
[01:17:15.752]So, I'm gonna go to Roger Wehrbein up here,
[01:17:18.428]who has a question, we're gonna do three more.
[01:17:20.715]So, Roger just yell your question out if you would.
[01:17:24.232]I think I know the answer to the question,
[01:17:26.891]but based on your worldwide understanding.
[01:17:31.790]What do you consider the biggest risk
[01:17:33.216]to American agriculture in the future?
[01:17:35.735]So, to repeat the question, given, you know,
[01:17:39.509]your experience internationally,
[01:17:41.296]and your global understanding.
[01:17:42.433]What do you think the biggest risk
[01:17:43.630]is to American agriculture in the future?
[01:17:50.542](laughing)
[01:17:52.701]Government.
[01:17:53.867]Government.
[01:17:55.588]Washington DC, government.
[01:17:59.415]And farmers who won't change behavior.
[01:18:03.455]So, we can control one of them,
[01:18:06.172]much better than we can the other one.
[01:18:08.331]But we have soil erosion today
[01:18:10.549]that's as bad as the 1930's, you just don't see it
[01:18:13.590]because we can cover it up with great big equipment.
[01:18:16.130]And so, you know, farmers have
[01:18:21.130]to change, and there are solutions to this,
[01:18:23.669]and there's answers to this, and there are even
[01:18:26.153]things in place today that could help them do that.
[01:18:28.776]If they would actually fund conservation programs,
[01:18:31.528]instead of, you know, they would actually
[01:18:33.211]give them money, you know, farmers would do a lot more.
[01:18:37.693]If the EQIP program really had money in it,
[01:18:40.675]that was significant for changing,
[01:18:43.288]you know, how farmers are able to do things,
[01:18:44.890]more farmers would do it.
[01:18:46.972]This is government driven, anything at scale
[01:18:50.393]is government driven.
[01:18:51.460]You can't fix, correct, change, or start anything
[01:18:55.118]in agriculture if the government isn't behind it,
[01:18:58.680]cause it's gonna be the money,
[01:19:00.272]and it's gonna be the policy.
[01:19:01.932]And you can't beat those two things
[01:19:03.174]no matter how hard you try.
[01:19:04.974]And the second part of the answer
[01:19:08.470]is what I answered earlier, if we,
[01:19:11.138]we have a system today, you can walk
[01:19:15.986]in most communities in a couple mile radius,
[01:19:19.909]and go into three, or four, or five different supermarkets.
[01:19:22.474]And you have a huge array of all this fresh vegetables,
[01:19:26.317]and you know fruits, and all these things
[01:19:31.206]that you can select from, and they're affordable,
[01:19:33.682]and they're safe, and there's diversity
[01:19:36.434]in what you can buy.
[01:19:37.734]Those three things are at stake for this country
[01:19:40.299]if we can't figure out how to put together
[01:19:43.340]a workforce, cause I will tell you
[01:19:45.872]it is absolutely false when people talk about,
[01:19:49.819]"Americans will do that."
[01:19:51.595]Go down to Yuma, Arizona, and walk out
[01:19:54.601]into one of those fields.
[01:19:56.261]I've done it 100 times, and walk out
[01:19:59.140]one of those fields, you won't find
[01:20:00.917]an American, but yet to hire those people,
[01:20:03.959]you have to advertise everywhere
[01:20:06.617]that they think an American will come from.
[01:20:08.974]And if you go out and stand in that field,
[01:20:11.435]you won't last one afternoon pickin' vegetables.
[01:20:15.730]So, the truth is we don't want to do that work,
[01:20:19.619]and that's okay if we have a system
[01:20:22.974]that supports our food industry that we have today,
[01:20:27.536]but we're gonna lose that if we don't do better at that.
[01:20:30.276]And it's something that most people could care less about.
[01:20:33.271]They don't care until they can't buy oranges,
[01:20:35.570]or that, you know, oranges become five times the price,
[01:20:38.809]or somebody starts getting sick
[01:20:40.272]cause some pesticide was used somewhere
[01:20:41.932]because there's no EPA or FDA to regulate it
[01:20:44.753]because it's coming from some other country.
[01:20:46.808]So, you know, people don't care
[01:20:49.153]until they go, "This is, I mean, I'm affected by it."
[01:20:52.787]You know, "It's impacting me."
[01:20:54.586]So, you know, that is a huge, huge issue
[01:20:58.487]that just people don't either understand or care about.
[01:21:01.668]And it's a big deal, it's a really big deal.
[01:21:04.326]I mean, it's a part where we spend
[01:21:06.950]a lot of our time working on,
[01:21:10.165]aside from a lot of what you've heard us talk about,
[01:21:12.905]and it's a big deal.
[01:21:14.130]So, Ronnie, only 30, wait, 30 seconds on,
[01:21:16.277]I just want to say.
[01:21:16.996]I think building on that, just the disconnect
[01:21:19.191]between the values in rural communities,
[01:21:23.416]and what Howard's talking about
[01:21:25.785]in terms of people not understanding
[01:21:27.364]where their food's coming from.
[01:21:28.444]What goes into that process,
[01:21:29.592]practices that need to be changed
[01:21:31.265]all the way down the food chain.
[01:21:33.087]That disconnect is going to be
[01:21:34.829]one of the dangerous things we have
[01:21:35.791]because then it goes all the way up
[01:21:36.964]to policy makers in Washington,
[01:21:39.449]and all the way back down effectively
[01:21:41.724]to the rural communities that, you know,
[01:21:43.106]are suffering as a result.
[01:21:44.894]So, we're gonna take Jordan, your question
[01:21:47.215]on the left, and we'll end up with Chuck Schroeder,
[01:21:49.781]fittingly, with our last question for the day.
[01:21:53.222]Hi, my name is Sarah Schellpeper,
[01:21:55.021]and thinking back on my classes
[01:21:56.833]and international experiences,
[01:21:58.713]when you guys work abroad, how do you work
[01:22:00.780]with government and culture when creating programs
[01:22:03.496]so that you don't disturb the society, or the economy there?
[01:22:08.133]You gotta repeat that again,
[01:22:09.781]I had a little trouble hearing it.
[01:22:10.757]Sorry, can you repeat it again for Mr. Buffett.
[01:22:13.474]Okay.
[01:22:14.240]I'm old, I can't hear, I can't see.
[01:22:17.119]I'm sorry.
[01:22:20.165]That's more than I get from most people.
[01:22:21.649](laughing)
[01:22:25.609]When you choose to work abroad,
[01:22:27.212]how do you work with government and culture
[01:22:29.116]when creating a program that will not
[01:22:31.019]disrupt society or the local economy?
[01:22:34.425]Well, we work with very few governments
[01:22:37.339]because we that it wastes time.
[01:22:40.565]And, it's true, I mean, if we spent our time
[01:22:44.861]working with governments we would get nothing done,
[01:22:46.579]in most cases.
[01:22:47.438]Obviously, I already explained that's why
[01:22:48.460]we're in Rwanda because we believe in the government,
[01:22:50.910]and we can depend on the government
[01:22:52.140]in what they say, and what they do.
[01:22:54.230]Talk about P4P.
[01:22:56.110]P4P would be the best example I think,
[01:22:57.979]Purchase for Progress.
[01:22:59.454]Well, go ahead.
[01:23:00.174]Okay, well, I mean, I think, one of the programs,
[01:23:02.391]I didn't mean to interrupt, sorry,
[01:23:03.389]I thought you'd want to run with that, but...
[01:23:04.794]I'm used to it.
[01:23:05.734](laughing)
[01:23:07.870]So, and we highlight this in a chapter
[01:23:10.273]that's called buy local, and it really talks about
[01:23:12.711]how there are a number of international aid programs
[01:23:15.892]that have been setup that inadvertently
[01:23:19.328]do exactly what you're saying,
[01:23:20.373]which is to destroy local economies
[01:23:22.358]around dumping food aid, and destroying prices
[01:23:24.715]for local farmers, and part of what we've tried to do
[01:23:26.689]is work with the UN World Food Program,
[01:23:29.346]and with some governments through them,
[01:23:31.054]not us directly usually, in making sure
[01:23:33.213]that a lot of those programs don't continue
[01:23:35.291]to cause a lot of suffering in the way
[01:23:37.230]that they've been designed, sorry.
[01:23:38.553]The worst program that policy makers ever invented
[01:23:44.095]was monetization.
[01:23:45.813]Because we take our commodities,
[01:23:48.553]and we go over and sell them in a place
[01:23:51.734]where farmers already struggle in marketplaces,
[01:23:55.797]have a difficult time, and then we dump
[01:23:58.908]those commodities onto the local market,
[01:24:01.207]and sell them so that a US NGO can pay
[01:24:04.562]US people salaries in that country.
[01:24:08.346]It is beyond a bad idea, and I've seen
[01:24:11.770]a lot of farmers,
[01:24:14.138]and people in marketplaces,
[01:24:16.855]in the value chain, suffer from that,
[01:24:19.664]It might be very clever, but clever ideas
[01:24:22.160]aren't always good ideas.
[01:24:23.901]And so, when you talk about
[01:24:28.521]having a negative impact on culture,
[01:24:31.784]it's those kinds of decisions that work
[01:24:34.709]for you, but they don't work for the people
[01:24:37.101]that you are supposedly trying to help.
[01:24:39.527]And so, you do more damage with your clever idea
[01:24:43.683]than what you do as an end result of what that money brings.
[01:24:49.260]I don't know if that answered it, but.
[01:24:51.559]And our last question, Chuck Schroeder.
[01:24:53.730]Well, number one, let me say
[01:24:55.170]that your message, realistic message,
[01:25:00.057]about the importance of rural communities
[01:25:02.298]could not have been a more profound statement to kickoff
[01:25:04.376]this conference, and I'm deeply grateful for that.
[01:25:07.731]Number two is I think about the evolution of your focus,
[01:25:11.214]from agriculture, to food, to conflict resolution,
[01:25:14.197]it strikes me that it has great importance
[01:25:18.376]to those of us trying to build
[01:25:19.618]strong, vital, rural communities in this country as well.
[01:25:22.497]There are interesting parallels.
[01:25:23.972]As you take the work of your foundation
[01:25:27.616]into areas of conflict and poverty,
[01:25:32.470]food shortages, it seems to me
[01:25:36.079]that while indeed, while you might focus on
[01:25:38.971]practices and technologies, both of you
[01:25:42.117]are a force of nature in your own style,
[01:25:45.031]but the critical important thing is the leadership
[01:25:47.619]that you would leave behind there
[01:25:49.732]that can carry forward sound practices,
[01:25:54.295]and leadership in their communities,
[01:25:55.595]drawing people together to do the things
[01:25:57.255]that you're trying to teach them to do.
[01:25:59.240]How do you find those leaders?
[01:26:00.923]How do you invest in their development
[01:26:03.883]for long-term sustainability?
[01:26:06.738]Yeah, it's tough.
[01:26:08.173]Well, leaders,
[01:26:13.165]and they don't have to be well known,
[01:26:15.168]and they don't have to be somebody you've read about,
[01:26:17.025]but leaders tend to evolve, they tend to surface.
[01:26:21.704]And so, it's a hit and miss thing
[01:26:26.672]because you be, you're betting on people,
[01:26:30.109]and some of those bets are gonna be wrong.
[01:26:32.418]But there's no other, there's no scientific way
[01:26:35.112]I know of to do it, it's way more
[01:26:36.854]of an art than it is a science.
[01:26:38.896]And so, you know, we're investing
[01:26:44.197]150 million, well more than that,
[01:26:47.053]200 million dollars in one area
[01:26:50.721]based on one person that we have confidence in.
[01:26:53.217]That's a terrible strategy, I mean it's terrible!
[01:26:57.094]You know, they tried to kill him last year,
[01:26:59.196]they hit him with two rounds
[01:27:00.577]from an AK-47, and he's walking around just fine,
[01:27:04.117]but that doesn't usually happen
[01:27:05.894]when you get hit with two rounds.
[01:27:07.450]So, it's a terrible strategy, but it's
[01:27:12.773]the willingness to take the risk to do it,
[01:27:14.641]but this guy is changing things
[01:27:17.184]that no one's ever had the guts to try,
[01:27:21.183]or the wherewithal to do it,
[01:27:23.865]so you know, it's a bet,
[01:27:26.929]and the way you keep it going
[01:27:32.485]is through, and anybody who knows me
[01:27:35.817]will know, Todd Sneller particularly is here,
[01:27:39.996]he'll know that I am like,
[01:27:43.745]I usually get kicked off every university campus I go to,
[01:27:46.265]cause I'm kind of anti-academic,
[01:27:48.169]but, so for me to be saying,
[01:27:52.104]for me, I save that for the very end.
[01:27:57.114]But there's a lot of context
[01:27:58.820]that I'd have to explain, but.
[01:28:00.346]Practical and applied, and yeah that's...
[01:28:02.192]But the truth is
[01:28:06.074]that we have to
[01:28:08.559]do the things we're doin' with
[01:28:09.742]the University of Nebraska with the Rwandan students,
[01:28:12.012]we have to find ways to do that more often,
[01:28:15.529]in effective ways, and provide those people
[01:28:20.515]who have the skills and the desire to be leaders,
[01:28:24.102]to help them be leaders.
[01:28:25.960]And, you know, it's not,
[01:28:28.073]you don't go boom, you're a leader, you know.
[01:28:31.277]That comes from life lessons,
[01:28:33.494]it comes from understanding judgement,
[01:28:36.581]and reading people,
[01:28:39.936]and taking some risk,
[01:28:41.931]and doing, I mean it comes from all sorts of.
[01:28:43.957]No one just gets born as a leader,
[01:28:46.359]they might have the qualities to be a leader,
[01:28:48.798]but you have to pull that out,
[01:28:50.179]you have to give them the resources
[01:28:51.653]to pull that out of themselves.
[01:28:53.418]So, you know,
[01:28:56.837]I will send more kids
[01:28:58.637]to college in the future when I would've told you,
[01:29:01.017]I would never have done that.
[01:29:02.235]Because that is a way to give them
[01:29:05.416]the resources to pull the leadership out of them.
[01:29:09.061]And that's gonna be a really important thing
[01:29:11.813]going forward in the countries where we work
[01:29:13.554]because it is a total lack of leadership
[01:29:16.573]that often, not everywhere, but many places,
[01:29:19.835]is what prevents anybody from changing anything.
[01:29:24.118]And so, you know, and leadership
[01:29:27.821]in a conflict area is a lot different
[01:29:30.770]than leadership in Washington DC.
[01:29:33.638]So, you have to have different people
[01:29:35.251]with different ideas, different skills,
[01:29:37.991]different tolerances for different things.
[01:29:39.930]And so, you know,
[01:29:43.322]it's a very tough thing to do,
[01:29:45.342]and we'll make some bad bets,
[01:29:47.645]but we've made some really good bets too.
[01:29:50.012]And, you know, if you look at Rwanda,
[01:29:52.207]I'm betting on president Kagame.
[01:29:54.273]I'm betting that this guy will take
[01:29:57.489]what he's done in the last 20 years,
[01:29:59.730]and take it forward in the next 20 years.
[01:30:01.785]That doesn't mean it's gonna look exactly the same,
[01:30:03.990]it just means you've got a leader,
[01:30:05.824]and somebody who's willing to take the risk,
[01:30:08.506]and take the chances.
[01:30:09.806]So, even though I made that statement,
[01:30:12.825]I think I made up for it by saying
[01:30:14.171]that I'll send more kids to school.
[01:30:15.588](laughing)
[01:30:18.026]And some definitely to Lincoln.
[01:30:20.713]But anyway, I mean it's just.
[01:30:22.013](laughing)
[01:30:25.031]Anyways it's, you know, you have
[01:30:27.190]to help people be leaders,
[01:30:28.641]you can't just expect them,
[01:30:30.453]are there some born leaders like Martin Luther King,
[01:30:32.363]or somebody, I mean who knows what it took for him
[01:30:34.847]to have the guts and to be able to stand up there
[01:30:38.352]and do what somebody like that did.
[01:30:39.909]I mean, we don't know that story.
[01:30:41.708]We just know how we've seen him,
[01:30:44.192]but that couldn't have been, you know,
[01:30:45.974]he didn't just get up one day and say,
[01:30:47.612]"I'm gonna be a leader."
[01:30:48.970]So, we have to help people be leaders.
[01:30:52.835]And on that great ending note, please join me
[01:30:55.123]in thanking Howard and Howard Buffett for a great.
[01:30:57.966](applause)
[01:31:09.158]Our tradition with the Heuermann Lectures
[01:31:12.636]is always to give our lecturers a momento
[01:31:16.460]for them to remember the occasion
[01:31:18.108]of coming to the University of Nebraska,
[01:31:20.465]and being a Heuermann lecturer.
[01:31:22.682]It features The Tree of Life, which is much
[01:31:25.201]of what we're talking about here
[01:31:27.221]related to agriculture so Howard thank you very much.
[01:31:30.065]Thank you very much.
[01:31:31.040]For coming and being with us.
[01:31:32.690]I think maybe it was a gold bar.
[01:31:35.516]And Howard thank you very much.
[01:31:37.169]Thank you so much.
[01:31:38.005]Thank you.
[01:31:38.783](applause)
[01:31:39.752](inspirational rock music)

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Heuermann Lecture
Howard G Buffett
Howard W. Buffett
40 Chances

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Finding Hope: Pioneering Your Own 40 Chances

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