Sam Dryden explains how his team thinks about its work in agricultural development.
As director of the Agricultural Development program,
I work with a team of people who are continually thinking about ways to improve the well-being and resiliency of farm families in Africa and Asia. Our strategy, which we just refreshed, is just one of many at the foundation that relate to these families. We also focus on improving sanitation, avoiding diseases through vaccines and better nutrition, and providing access to financial services, to name just a few.
I am privileged to lead and work with this outstanding group of individuals. They come from a wide variety of backgrounds, with tremendous experience and dedication to improving the lives of those less fortunate than ourselves. Most are leaders in their respective fields who have chosen to pursue work they find truly meaningful here at the foundation. One purpose ties us all together. Whether we come from a lab, an engineering firm, or agricultural extension service, we believe all people deserve the opportunity to live a healthy and productive life with dignity. We also believe our efforts can make a difference.
The type of farmer we serve lives and works on a small parcel of land about the size of a football field. She—usually a woman—grows a diversity of crops and raises a few livestock. She lives from season to season in the hopes of getting enough food from that land to feed her children and perhaps sell some surplus in the market. The well-being of her family not only depends on her efforts, it is also subject to the fate of nature: when the rains fall (or not) and whether pests attack her crops. Consequently, she has very little margin for error. She does not receive a salary or have access to health care or retirement benefits. Her children keep coming down with diarrhea, in part because she doesn’t have a toilet. Perhaps she herself is also a patient who would have benefitted from a lifesaving vaccine.
If we’re successful at the foundation—with agriculture and the other areas in the developing world in which we work—then we’re helping to create solutions to the many problems poor people face. These solutions build on each other so that in the end, people’s lives and their children’s prospects are significantly improved.
Agriculture is one of the fundamental building blocks of development. The majority of the world’s poorest people are families farming small plots of land. Helping them grow and sell more food is a smart way to reduce hunger and poverty. And over time, with additional resources, these farm families can become self-sufficient and build better lives. When a family grows more diverse food, the children’s nutrition improves. They are able to survive bouts of sickness. Parents have extra money to pay medical bills. And when children are healthy, they are more likely to be able to work and attend school, which means the benefits are passed to the next generation.
Some people may ask how my team and I—working at the world’s largest foundation located in a prosperous corner of a rich nation—can relate to a subsistence farming family in Ethiopia or Bangladesh. This is a very reasonable question to ask. The farmer has a direct connection to the land and we are considerably removed, both by distance and culture. We begin by realizing these differences and humbly listening to farmers and their families, learning and respecting their cultures, ways of living, and knowledge of place and home. The solutions we seek are those appropriate and welcomed in this context, not those imposed by distant values or interests.
I grew up on a working family farm. So did our CEO, Jeff Raikes, and others on my team. Although we left to pursue other careers, we well know the importance of soil health and land conservation to produce the crops upon which families rely. Jeff and I both recall the long hours of seemingly unrelenting work necessary to plant, grow, and harvest our crops, and wondering if the next rain storm would turn into hail and destroy the fields. And just as all farms in Africa are not alike, the same is true in America. Jeff grew up in Nebraska on the type of large acreage farm that produces the grain that feeds much of America. I, on the other hand, grew up on a small, hardscrabble, subsistence farm in rural Appalachia. We grew different crops and used different farming practices, but we both recall the importance of and reliance upon family and community to support one another. It is the resiliency of family and community that motivates us, along with countless others from similar backgrounds in the foundation.
Lastly, it’s very important to understand that our work is not implemented by us, but by our grantees—a smart, hard-working, and dedicated group of individuals and organizations upon whom we rely. We constantly seek partners who understand the connection of these farming families to their land and culture. For example, we work closely with our colleagues at AGRA, our partner in Africa, to help us build meaningful relationships on the ground. Together with all our grantees, we work to build local capacity in the form of community cooperatives, with as close a connection to the families as possible. Our grantees carry out these efforts, working to turn our hopes for self-sufficiency for these families into reality. We salute their efforts and are proud to be their partner.