Bill Gates, Carlos Slim inaugurate agricultural bioscience complex in Mexico
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E-mail Xinhua, February 14, 2013
Two important magnates in the world, Bill Gates and Mexico's Carlos Slim, opened Wednesday a new bioscience research complex in central Mexico' s Texcoco.
The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) will allow researchers to speed up the development of valuable seeds, by way of more precise characterization of its genetic traits, such as heat and drought tolerance, disease and pest resistance, and seed health, as well as the nutritional and industrial quality of the grain, CIMMYT said in a statement.
Carlos Slim, considered the world's richest man with a fortune estimated at about 70 billion U.S. dollars, said he funded the new facilities with 25 million dollars, which should speed up "the use of mobile technologies" that will provide farmers around the world with information on weather, market prices and new techniques to improve their productivity.
This "will allow families of poor farmers grow and sell more food and to build self-sufficient and prosperous communities," said Bill Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, at the opening of the complex in Texcoco, 45 km from the capital Mexico City.
"Bringing together the collective experience of our respective organizations, we can promote innovation to transform the lives of farmers in Mexico and around the world," Gates said.
"Our foundation has been a big supporter of CIMMYT. We are announcing today a new initiative to help small farmer in South Asia which will be 18 million dollar grant," he said, adding that "investing in agricultural development is one of the most effective investments we can make. It allows farming communities to become self-sufficient and prosperous by growing and selling more of what they produce."
Meanwhile, Slim said the alliance is a step toward making this knowledge available to farmers everywhere, particularly small- and medium-scale farmers, as well as promoting economic growth, employment, and food self-sufficiency and exports from this sector."
Both the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Carlos Slim Foundation have been generous supporters of CIMMYT's mission. The buildings inaugurated Wednesday are the result of the Carlos Slim Foundation's investment in CIMMYT. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation partners with CIMMYT in projects to fight hunger around the world.
"We will see the introduction of modern and more sustainable farming practices," said CIMMYT Director General Thomas A. Lumpkin, "These include precision and conservation agriculture, backed by intelligent mobile phone services in farmers' fields and digital tools in labs that will open our access to the full genetic diversity of maize and wheat to benefit the world's poorest farming communities."
CIMMYT is a non-profit research and training center headquartered in Mexico. It works with and brings together public research and extension organizations, private companies, advanced research institutes, NGOs, and farmer associations in countries worldwide, working pragmatically and apolitically to fight hunger and poverty. Endi
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