3 Quotes by Howard G. Buffett

...I am convinced that all the energy and good intentions in the world cannot trump cultural disconnects. To be effective, we have to ask questions of and listen to the people affected by what we want to do. Then we must engage them early in our planning and keep adjusting our approaches.

As you look more broadly at the many countries of Africa where agriculture is difficult and people are hungry and inject both internal and cross-border conflict and corruption into the mix, to me the conclusion is clear: we need major initiatives in agriculture, but they need to be designed around simple, basic technologies and inputs for subsistence farmers, not large-scale farms.

The challenge is clear: we have to conserve and improve the soil we have, and we need to turn dirt into soil wherever people need to grow food. That's true in America's breadbasket, it's true in the tropics, and it's true in the dry, hardscrabble, weathered soils that cover much of sub- Saharan Africa.