I think agricultural productivity is one of the most basic things
that can help the poor move to a more prosperous life.
There was a green revolution
based on new seeds
and it raised nutrition levels, it reduced poverty
It was one of the great breakthroughs of all time.
Now we need to bring that advance to Africa.
If you look at productivity per hectare in Africa,
it’s a fifth of what we have in the United States.
But there’s no doubt that a combination of better seeds
and better inputs, including fertilizer,
can raise African agricultural productivity.
Ethiopia is part way down that path.
They’ve almost doubled agricultural output over the last eight years.
There’s tons of ways that digital technology helps farmers.
The cell phone is really kind of unbelievable.
You know, market prices—what’s working? What’s going on with the weather?
All these decisions about what to plant.
What are the prices? What are the diseases?
Eventually it is like your lifeline to all of the expertise that’s out there.
Soil maps. They can be looking at these satellite photos and say, gosh,
we seem to be getting high productivity here, low productivity here.
You take a photo of something
and some expert looks at it and says, okay, that doesn’t have enough potassium or enough nitrogen.
That’s mostly in the future, but that’s real stuff.
It’s mind blowing.