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How did Gates jump from conceptual products to natural produce? He is married and they have the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation aimed at ‘bringing innovations to health and learning to the global community.’ With
active support from Rob Horsch and David Bergvinson, the Gates Foundation is funding the US $20 million
Legumes II project of ICRISAT, CIAT and IITA. This was launched on September 24 at Arusha, Tanzania. The Gates
Foundation had earlier supported Legumes I.
Certainly, crop researchers can learn from Microsoft’s corporate experience:
Microsoft Research is dedicated to conducting both basic and applied research in computer science and software
engineering. Its goals are to enhance the user experience (with) computing devices, reduce the cost of writing
and maintaining software, and invent novel computing technologies. Microsoft Research also collaborates openly
with colleges and universities worldwide to broadly advance the field of computer science.
How did Gates jump from
conceptual products to
natural produce? He is
married and they have the
Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation aimed at
‘bringing innovations to
health and learning to the
global community.’
Borrowing from that, the tropical legumes project is basic and applied research
on food legumes, its goals being to enhance the farmer’s experience with
growing beans, soybean, chickpea, pigeonpea, cowpea, groundnut; to reduce
the cost of cultivating and sustaining legume production; to invent novel
production technologies. Legumes II is also about institutional collaboration
to broadly advance the field of semi-arid tropical agriculture.
In launching Legumes II at the New Arusha Hotel, Director General William
Dar of ICRISAT (photo, the man in the middle) reminded those delegates from
Sub-Saharan Africa (Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Mali,
Niger, Nigeria) and from South Asia (India and Myanmar) about the urgent
need to improve the livelihoods of people living below the poverty line. Where
technologies are already available, research institutes and development
agencies have to make resolute efforts to raise the awareness of farmers of
such technologies, to spark their interest in such matters, to make them
desirous to adopt such innovations, to remove any obstacles to their acceptance and use. ‘In short,’ he said, ‘we
have an institution to grow, a mission to fulfill, and impacts to achieve.’ In each of the Sub-Saharan African and
South Asian countries that are part of Legumes II, it is necessary that local institutions be strengthened to support
the new tools and techniques; that, together, research centers and development agencies be aware that they
have influences to exert and a mission to accomplish.
In that same occasion, the Director General of ICRISAT made clear to the Legumes II launching delegates, that it
was ‘necessary to close the gap between intention and action’ – that research proceed to extension. This is the
research-for-development paradigm. R4D. Microsoft is at home with the process, if not the acronym. There are no
one-size-fits-all solutions. In computer science, software must lend itself to customization, to tinkering by a tutor to
fit his teaching style, by a student to fit his learning style. In crop science, Dar said decisions ought to be made
‘taking into account natural resource fragility, community vulnerability, risk profiles, asset resilience, market options’
and other things. I interpret that to mean farmers must consider the:
Learning From Microsoft R4D