Accra, Jan. 25, GNA - Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, announced $306 million in grants to agricultural initiatives across Africa and Southeast Asia, doubling the foundation's total investment in agricultural development.

A statement released to the Ghana News Agency in Accra said these grants were part of the foundation's overall Agricultural Development initiative launched in mid-2006, as part of the Global Development Programme across the world.

Bill Gates said at a press conference held at the World Economic Forum in Davos, the grants were focused on a range of interventions across the entire agricultural value chain from planting the highest quality seeds and improving farm management practices to boost the market.

The fund was aimed at improving small scale farmers to lift themselves out of poverty and hunger and also boost the yields and incomes of millions of small scale farmers in Africa and other parts of the developing world.

He regretted that support for agriculture in the developing world had been relatively neglected in recent decades, but was a critical tool to drive development in rural areas, where the vast majority of the world's poorest people still lived.

"If we are serious about ending extreme hunger and poverty around the world, we must be serious about transforming agriculture for small farmers most of whom are women," Gates said.

He added that investments for improving the quality of seeds, developing healthier soil and creating new markets will pay off not only in children fed and lives saved, but also can have a dramatic impact on poverty reduction as families generate additional income and improve their lives.

Gates said the foundation believed, with strong partnerships and a redoubled commitment to agricultural development by donor and developing country governments, philanthropists and private sectors, hundreds of millions of small farmers would be able to boost their yields and incomes to uplift themselves out of hunger and poverty. He however promised the foundation planed to invest a total of $900 million through 2008.

Gates said according to the World Bank, three-quarters of the 1.1 billion people who lived on less than $1 a day live in rural areas and depended on agriculture for a living.

More than 820 million people suffer from chronic hunger in the developing world and the number was rising. He said in the world's poorest areas, small farmers frequently labour in harsh conditions. They faced depleted soils, pests, drought, diseases, and lack of water.

"Even if they managed to grow a surplus, they lacked access to reliable markets to sell their crops", Gates said. In a related development, Mr. Kofi Annan, Chairman of the Board of Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) said "Africa's soils were among the poorest in the world, and poor soils produced poor crops, this program aimed to revitalize Africa's severely depleted soils in order to increase the fertility and sustainability of small-scaled farms while safeguarding the environment." 25 Jan. 08