Subject: Howard Buffett
From: Amitabh Desai <[email-masked]>
To: Bruce Lindsey <[email-masked]>, Laura Graham <[email-masked]>, Doug Band - PC <[email-masked]>, Justin Cooper - PC <[email-masked]>, "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Cc: Robert Harrison <[email-masked]>, Ed Hughes <[email-masked]>, Walker Morris <[email-masked]>, Dennis Cheng <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 11:34:34 -0400

Had a good call today with Howard Buffett. Like WJC, he talked about strengthening agriculture (sustainably) in developing countries in Africa, Latin/Central America, and beyond; and also in reconfiguring US food aid to enable more local purchasing of food aid rather than shipping US farm produce overseas. [Besides running his farm, he runs farms in South Africa and Central America and is currently a UN WFP Ambassador and advocate for their Purchase for Progress initiative.] He was surprised to learn there are so many shared interests. We discussed a few areas of possible future collaboration, all of which effectively are either "talking" or "doing," on which I'd welcome your feedback:

DOING

-          COUNTRY VISIT. We discussed WJC's agriculture work in Rwanda/Malawi/Peru/Colombia and he is intrigued. He said he's visiting South Africa (where he runs a 9,000 acre farm) in August and would like to visit Malawi/Rwanda to see CF projects. We can help facilitate his visit. I didn't mention WJC's Africa trip but should we consider a joint-visit whenever WJC goes? [He liked the Neno wheat example of working ourselves out of a job.]

-          CDI. Funding for scaling-up commercial farms in Malawi/Tanzania. I explained our interest in growing the program, he said he'd like to work together given a lot of shared interests, and that he'll be able to make a decision after seeing our work first-hand. Whenever he visits Malawi, we should be prepared with a specific ask.

-          CARLOS SLIM. He said he has been in discussions with Marco about doing joint agriculture work in Mexico and he asked if we'd be open to discussing it and to WJC being involved as the convener. I said we work with Slim as well and that we'd be happy to discuss it together.

TALKING

-          He is writing a book and would like to profile WJC's agriculture work (we discussed Malawi). I said we'd be happy to discuss it further and provide him with more information about the projects.

-          CGI. He's going to try to come to CGI in September. He said it's right around corn harvest so he doesn't like being away from his farm but he will try to come for one day.

-          He asked if there any appetite to do joint advocacy on agriculture issues - most notably US food aid. I tried to bring it back to CGI as an opportunity for him to share his message there under the umbrella of CGI. It would be good to give him information on any agriculture-related programming or action networks being contemplated for September, for him to weigh-in on.

Hope this helps, and I'd welcome your feedback. Thanks, Ami