BILL GATES: IDEOLOGY THREATENS HUNGER FIX

BILL GATES PUSHES FOR MORE ATTENTION ON AFRICA
ADVOCATES FOR NEW 'GREENER' GREEN REVOLUTION

DES MOINES, Iowa (Reuters) - The fight to end hunger is being hurt by environmentalists who insist that genetically modified crops cannot be used in Africa, said Bill Gates, the billionaire founder of software giant Microsoft. Gates said GMO crops, fertilizer and chemicals are important tools - although not the only tools - to help small farms in Africa boost production. "This global effort to help small farmers is endangered by an ideological wedge that threatens to split the movement in two," Gates said in his first address on agriculture made during the annual World Food Prize forum. "Some people insist on an ideal vision of the environment," Gates said. "They have tried to restrict the spread of biotechnology into sub-Saharan Africa without regard to how much hunger and poverty might be reduced by it." The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in recent years has turned its focus to helping poor, small-holder farmers grow and sell more crops as a way to reduce hunger and poverty.

The foundation, which has committed $1.4 billion to agricultural development efforts, announced nine new grants worth a total of $120 million aimed at raising yields and farming expertise in the developing world. "The next Green Revolution has to be greener than the first," Gates said. "It must be guided by small-holder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and the environment." The World Food Prize was established by Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist known as "the father of the Green Revolution" for his work with rice and wheat.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US?

In this world everyone is puffed up with false prestige despite the failure of all his endeavors. When so-called philanthropists, who supposedly want to help the poor, are approached by members of the Krishna consciousness movement, they say, "You are simply wasting your time, while I am feeding vast masses of starving people." Unfortunately, their meager efforts, either singly or together, do not solve anyone's problems. ... Unfortunately such materialists, either singly or combined in the form of the United Nations, cannot fulfill their plans. The truth is that the many millions of human beings, animals, birds and trees - indeed, all living entities - are maintained solely by the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

Srila A.C. BV Swami Prabhupada:
"The Śrīmad Bhāgavatam - Purport in Canto 5 - Chapter 18 - Verse 27"