What is Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations (Gates Ag One)?
Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations, also known as Gates Ag One, was created to accelerate the most promising agricultural breakthroughs and innovations in reaching – and benefiting – smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
As a nonprofit affiliate of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we act like an agricultural innovation accelerator, connecting what is currently a fragmented R&D pipeline for smallholders.
We champion a coordinated, networked approach to innovation that generates and shares knowledge freely, believing that collaboration creates the best results.
Our operating model is therefore underpinned by dynamic partnerships, both with organizations local to our headquarters in St. Louis, MO, such as the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, as well as leading institutions around the world.
What innovations does Gates Ag One focus on?
Gates Ag One is demand driven, focused on investing in areas with the greatest potential for impact that provide smallholder farmers with the options that best meet their needs.
We are most interested in innovations that lead to improved varieties of six priority crops:
Cassava, one of the most important crops to smallholder farmers and African diets.
Cowpea, an all-purpose crop that holds impressive capacity to nourish people, livestock, and the soil.
Maize, the most abundantly produced cereal crop in the world, used for food, feed and fuel.
Soybean, a crucial commodity crop for economic development and a global source of protein and plant-based oil.
Sorghum, an important crop for smallholder farmer adaptation to climate change, particularly in the world’s arid regions.
Our initial portfolio of research grants is focused on taking advantage of plant biology to increase the productivity and resilience of crops that are central to smallholder agricultural systems. These first projects include:
Cassava Source-Sink (CASS), which unites researchers from 11 institutions around the world to optimize cassava physiology.
We also work with partners to protect intellectual property to ensure that promising early-stage innovations can ultimately be translated into products beneficial to smallholder farmers in line with Global Access principles.
Where does Gates Ag One work and why?
Gates Ag One focuses on serving the unmet needs of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia where the scale of need and market viability are greatest.
Smallholder farmers make essential contributions to the global food system, but in some countries, only 10% of farmers have access to the latest generation of seeds or planting material.
Sub-Saharan Africa has 25% of the world’s arable land yet produces only 10% of global agricultural output. The situation is similar across much of South Asia.
Low agricultural productivity is a main driver of persistent poverty in these regions.
Supporting smallholder agriculture helps unlock numerous development gains such as better livelihoods, stronger economies, and greater climate resilience.
We pursue this mission from our headquarters in St. Louis, one of the fastest-growing and top-ranked emerging life sciences markets in the U.S. With its thriving and growing ecosystem for agricultural innovation, this location offers an advantageous setting for our work.
How does Gates Ag One decide what to fund?
We prioritize the areas of greatest potential for impact. Our aim is to invest in a wide toolbox of innovations that support smallholder farmers in low-income countries as they work to create a better life for their families and communities.
Our current scientific areas of focus include improving the efficiency of photosynthesis, maximizing the uptake of crop nutrients like nitrogen, protecting crop yields from stressors like pests and disease, and increasing yields of crops most important to smallholder farmers.
We also invest in forming the partnerships needed to translate breakthrough innovations into valuable and viable produces that reach smallholder farmers.
For example, Gates Ag One is part of an international alliance that unites experts across three continents to advance crop research in the interests of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. These partners include:
Ghana’s Savanna Agricultural Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR-SARI)
Nigeria’s Institute for Agricultural Research (IAR)
the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF)
Australia’s national science agency the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)
How does Gates Ag One work with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation?
Since its inception in 2000, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has been focused on fighting the world’s greatest inequities, creating programs that address issues such as gender equality, agricultural development, and public education.
Both the foundation and Gates Ag One share the conviction that all lives have equal value and are working towards a similar goal of serving smallholder farmers with complementary approaches.
The easiest way to describe how we are different is that Gates Ag One is “product” focused while the foundation is “systems” focused.
We work closely with the foundation to close the gap between scientific breakthroughs and the innovations that are delivered directly to smallholder farmers.
