When it comes to combating world hunger and boosting agriculture, Howard G. Buffett—son of the world-famous investing icon—is a strategist much like his father.
But while the elder Buffett is known for his flighty plays in the stock market, you might say Howard G.’s passions are more down to earth.
"Soil is any farmer's most valuable working capital," says Buffett, who spends most of his time managing the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, based in Decatur, Ill., and as an advocate for soil conservation. "Soil fertility has the single largest impact on production capacity."
Buffett was in Seattle recently to discuss the manifesto, 40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World he co-wrote with his son Howard W. Buffett. Both men are farmers, but they’re not strangers to corporate boardrooms. Warren Buffett has said he'd like Howard G., 58, currently a board member at Berkshire Hathaway, to succeed him as non-executive chairman.
In 2006, Warren Buffett challenged his son by asking him what he would do if he had the resources to do something great. Howard G., an advocate of habitat protection and biodiversity, focused on a fundamental issue: hunger and food security for the world's poorest billion people.
Buffett, who farms 1,500 acres in Illinois, notes the U.S. benefits from some of the best soils and most productive agricultural lands in the world—a fertility belt that covers most of the lower 48 states.
That means that when the U.S. maximizes the productivity of its agricultural land, it should be able to save fragile ecosystems elsewhere.
But the opposite has occurred. For example, he notes, an unintended consequence of former president Jimmy Carter's grain embargo in l980 against the former Soviet Union was the opening up of world markets to Brazil and Argentina, resulting in the destruction of huge tracts of Amazon rainforest to make way for agriculture.
In fact, Buffett says, American farmers have the potential to increase yields dramatically. This may seem surprising since U.S. farmers have been consuming water far more quickly than it's being replaced, stressing the nation’s water supplies.
But Buffett, who contends U.S. industrial farm practices are no longer cutting edge (Brazil, with far less productive soil, can nearly match our land productivity), advocates a "brown revolution." By that, he means paying attention to soil quality and engaging in conservation techniques that are well known but that industrial farmers in the U.S. nevertheless have ignored: cover crops, crop rotations, reduced tillage and the like.
"The critical issue today is not whether U.S. farmers can produce enough food for our current needs, but whether the way we are producing our food is mortgaging our ability to produce food tomorrow," he says.
The no-till farming systems that Buffett champions always keep cover on the soil. A farmer plants in either the residue from a former crop or in a separate cover crop—a process that increases organic matter in the soil, retains water and decreases erosion. It also sequesters carbon and cuts the use of fossil fuels.
While many of these techniques are associated with organic agriculture, Buffett still supports the use of genetically modified seed and nitrogen-based fertilizer—albeit substantially less than if he did not focus on taking care of the soil.
"I don't believe organic agriculture can feed the world," he says.
He prefers the term "biological agriculture" to indicate that no-till is about using biology rather than chemistry to enhance the soil—and to emphasize the soil.
In Brazil, the reddish, acidic heavy-clay soil of the country’s Cerrado region makes it one of the most difficult farming areas in the world, he notes. But because the government has promoted no-till farming and developed an ecosystem of policies to support this type of large-scale sustainable agriculture, the productivity of this land nearly matches that of his U.S. farm.
"Leaders of countries grappling with food insecurity in some of the most difficult farming regions in the world, such as sub-Saharan Africa, should find reason to hope in what has happened in Brazil," he says.
Buffett says it is time to redesign subsidies in the U.S., which currently encourage short-term production rather than longer-term conservation of water and soil. Water use could be cut in half if modern and efficient center pivots and drip irrigation replaced “extraordinarily wasteful” flood irrigation and 25-year-old center pivots, he said.
"If we don't farm in a thoughtful and planned way, we will end up where many African countries are today; unable to feed their own people, let alone export food to the ever-growing world," he says.
A former investment banker, Ellie Winninghoff is a writer and consultant specializing in impact investing. More of her writing about impact investing is linked at her blog, DoGoodCapitalist.com and she can be reached at: ellie. winninghoff@gmail.com.
