Rockefeller Foundation looks for next big idea to feed the world - Raj Shah

Paul Yeager : Hi everybody, I'm Paul Yeager, this is the MtoM Show podcast. We're on location for the next couple of episodes at the World Food Prize and the Borlaug Dialogues. That's a series of meetings and seminars on a global scale, where we find out about issues that have come up and feeding the world as well as how things are getting done. It's always a celebration of everything food, but not what you think it is. In fact, it's a way to mix both public and private dollars. And that's going to be the focus of our next couple of episodes here. On the podcast, we're going to start with one of the private entities that is putting money in both medical as well as food research. That's the Rockefeller Foundation. We talked to the President of the Rockefeller Foundation, Raj Shah, he has a background with USAID. And now with the Rockefeller. He has many other interesting things that we're going to get into as we talk about large scale changes. We're going to talk about moonshots, where do we find it? Is it somebody who's attending the convention and conference here? We'll find out and this installment of the MToM Show podcast new episodes out each and every Tuesday. If you have feedback for me send it in an email at Paul.Yeager@IowaPBS.org. New episodes come out each and every Tuesday. So now let's get to this installment of the show. Is this your first time at the Borlaug dialogue?

[Raj Shah] This is not. I have been here probably four times since 2006. And my first time here was when I was a representative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It was also the first time I met Dr. Borlaug, right here in Des Moines.

[Yeager]  Oh, you're on that rare list of being able to say you've met him.

[Shah] I am, I am. And you know, in that very first meeting, I was a kid and I was young in my career. And he said, Raj, let's meet with you privately in my suite. So I went up to his room. And he's and he just hammered away. He's like Raj, we have the ability, we have it within us to fight hunger to actually end hunger. But we have to invest more in agricultural research, we have to elevate the role of agriculture and policy and politics. And we have to get serious about the fact that we got to invest in science based agriculture to actually produce enough food to to help heal the world. And he was in his 90s. But he had more energy, more passion and more data on his fingertips than you could possibly imagine.

[Yeager] When I look at your bio, on all the things that you've done, let's specifically I guess it might even might not even be to food. Have you ever met anybody like Dr. Borlaug who is so passionate? For so long? About one single topic?

[Shah] You know, I don't know. No, I haven't. I mean, I will say, because I had the chance to work with really some extraordinary people, you know, from Bill Gates to these local nonprofit leaders in West Africa that, you know, change the course of history for women and girls through an entire region of the planet. People like norm, just have a passion that burns inside of them. And, and they don't let go of it ever, you know, and, and I think it actually sustains them well into their older ages and Norm’s case in particular, he was even at the very end, he was just incredibly committed and active.

[Yeager] So obviously, that meeting to all the times that you've been back, it's important for you to be here this week. Why?

[Shah] Well, I now run the Rockefeller Foundation, and and and just launched a book called big bets. And we think that the world needs to make a much bigger bet to fight hunger, you know, I think we don't quite realize yet that given the impact of climate change. And given some of the disruptions that have been caused by the Russia, Ukraine war, and other conflicts, we're actually on path to increase the number of people around the planet that go hungry day to day that don't even get 2000 calories a day before they go to bed. And, you know, in 2023, that's inexcusable, and the numbers are going to go up. So, you know, we've had a real run of success between 2001 and 2017, we actually cut global hunger in half from about 13, 14% of the global population to about 7%. It started to creep up again to 9% and it's projected to go all the way back up to 14, 15%. If we don't do something differently, so we're here to get the world to be more focused, more committed and more aggressive, and more evidence based in the fight against hunger.

[Yeager] Sounds like we need another big idea.

[Shah] Well, we do we do and and the good news is big ideas don't don't come from any one individual but their communities leaders meeting here at the World Food Prize that are recommitting themselves to, for example, expanding school feeding programs around the world there are, I think about 730 million kids in school around the world, only about 400 million of them actually get a school meal. And, most of those school meals are not at all nutritious or sufficient for them. And so we have been investing in programs around the world, like in Kenya, where you get a kid a healthy school meal, produced locally by local farmers, you're both helping the local economy. And all of a sudden, girls' attendance in school goes up 150%, it's unbelievable. Kids are learning more and kids are eating properly. They're building habits for how to eat and entire food systems sustain that way. It's how we built the American food system, right? We helped farmers by buying food and giving them to people who needed it. And we should be doing that on a global basis.

[Yeager] The Rockefeller Foundation is a foundation, it's private. Do you get the sense that the efforts to fight global hunger are going to have to come from foundations, instead of governments?

[Shah] You know, foundations can be society's risk capital. So we can take a new idea was not even that new, like, you know, like school feeding and we can collect all the data, and we can come up with measures for how to capture whether a kid is getting a nutritious meal, and we can put in place measurement systems to say exactly how many kids around the world are benefiting? And what do you have to do to change that? But at the end of the day, absolutely not. It has to be governments that lead and I served in government, I ran a federal agency USAID for many years. And I know that governments require getting politics, right. You know, you gotta build bridges across sometimes difficult divides. But hunger is an issue that should bring Americans together on the left and the right. I've been a part of helping to do that in the past and think it can be done again.

[Yeager] We have a hard time agreeing on things and political administration's come in, and they want to run a different way. And it feels like we're always having to reset. I mean, I've attended enough dialogues to hear, oh, if this person's elected, it'll change. It's been kind of hard to see that change and corral everybody's different energy to a common goal. How do we accomplish that?

[Shah] Well, you know, I write about this in the book, Big Bets, because to me, it's about building personal relationships across the aisle, and understanding how to build coalitions in our modern times. You know, after the 2008 global financial crisis, there was actually a hunger crisis, 100 million people had been pushed back into a condition of extreme hunger. And, we fought that on a bipartisan basis, by creating a renewed set of programs that advanced America's leadership around the world, farmers from the US helped farmers in Africa, and Asia and Latin America grow, grow more and better in climate resilient foods. We expanded safety net programs for kids who were very vulnerable. And we did that by building a bipartisan coalition for it. And I'm convinced that underneath the noise of what's on TV, there are good people out there that want to do some good. And in that case, I was an appointee by President Obama progressive Democratic administration. But I held hands with Jim Inhofe and 1012 conservative Republican senators. And we prayed together and we talked about our values. And we ultimately decided America should once again lead the world to fight hunger. And that's what we did.

[Yeager] Senator Inhofe has a history of, he had the budget clock in his office, if I remember correctly, which is somewhat at the center of the Farm Bill negotiations right now. There is a coalition that says it's too bloated, it's too big. It's not really a farm bill anymore. It's a food bill spent more than 75% of it. So what used to be a way to get us together? We're having a hard time being a part. Do you see? What's your optimistic outlook for trying to have a farm bill and using that as a pattern for other things?

[Shah] Well, I'll tell you why I'm optimistic. You know, first of all, because it's a bill that touches both producers and consumers, and by the way, everybody is a consumer because we all eat food. Right? And because it's a bill that is critical to the fight against climate change, but also critical to helping rural communities have an economy that is more vibrant, and have schools that are better and have public services that are better supported. It should be the vehicle that actually helps bring people together. And you know, and we've seen this time and again, behind closed doors, when when push comes to shove, we pass farm bills in this country because it's one of the few pieces of legislation that touches rural communities, which sometimes vote conservative, but at the end of the day you know, they're more better represent our military service officers and enlisted folks coming coming out of those places. It represents urban communities where there are food needs and nutrition programs that are active. It represents our environmental lobby and concerns around a range of issues. And it just, it's it's forced collaboration. That's what the farm bill is. And we do get it done every five years. I think we're gonna get it done again.

[Yeager] Once we can get the government back open, yeah. Another speaker just pulled out here, while we recorded, I had a conversation, I guess it's a little bit of a telephone game here, go with me for a minute. Woman was talking with a food bank person in the state of Iowa who said, she gets calls about people being lazy, who are coming. That's who comes to get food at the food bank. And she says, I dare you to go put a hat on, come back tomorrow and stand in line. And you tell me anybody there, that is lazy. Where do you, and I'm guessing that's not only an American thing, where do we think someone who's hungry is lazy? But that's a global challenge. So I guess, what do you see your role in trying to dispel some of that to allow you to continue to do work?

[Shah] You know, I'm so glad you mentioned that, because I think that's true everywhere in the world, people have these misperceptions around those that are least fortunate, or those that are fallen on tough times. And the truth is, you know, we just had an experiment in America with the child tax credit, that was passed as part of the COVID Relief packages. And we saw child poverty in America go down by 50%. And we saw study after study after study across this country, in urban communities, rural communities, black communities, white communities, across the board, families that got the Child Tax Credit, use that money incredibly efficiently, for childcare, for health services for their kids for educational support, and for food. And, you know, it wasn't wasted. And I think data experience and the understanding that each of us deserves to be heard is a big part of the mindset we need to have when we craft these kinds of programs so that we can have a common fact base on which to talk about actual solutions that work.

[Yeager] Leave it with this last thing, you talk about all these groups come together. Your background with USAID, your work now with the Rockefeller, you've worked at USDA, you've worked for a president, you say government has to be a part of it. And we talk about politics. But again, it's a global picture, we have a hard time figuring out something that matters more on my street than it should in Israel, for example, in a current topic, again, give me one more pledge on why a global food fight is important to battle?

[Shah] Well, I'll tell you, you know, after 2008, when those 100 million people went hungry again, there were 47 episodes of political instability and violence around the world. I personally visited communities of migrants leaving parts of Africa and entering Europe and saw the and witnessed the instability that that created, we see it all the time I've been through Guatemala, Nicaragua, Honduras, if you don't create opportunities for people to be, you know, able to live in their homes, they are on the move, because you know, what any free single person on this planet wants is for their kid, to not go to bed hungry for their kid to have a shot at a brighter future. And you know, they'll do whatever it takes to get there. So if we're going to build the kind of world that's based on true stability, even today, in Israel in the Middle East and Gaza, you know, we can't let people starve out in the open, if we're going to expect dignity and opportunity to replace instability, violence and hatred. And you know, that's what our country has always stood for. We've always been the place that was founded based on a set of basic values. And when we honor those values in our foreign policy, we make ourselves safer. And that's been proven time and time again.

[Yeager] I'm gonna go back, this honestly, really last time. I just thought you said so made me think from the beginning when you came with Dr. Borlaug to now you mentioned, there's kind of been like this ebb and flow and what you've been talking about. Where do you think we are? Do we, have we, made progress through the dialogues in improving this fight?

[Shah] Well, we absolutely have. I can tell you firsthand that if we didn't have these dialogues, which are very global, we have leaders from all over the planet here and scientists from all over the planet here, and every age group and every community. The world would simply not have been as successful as it has been. I don't think people realize how successful the fight on hunger has been between 2001 and 2017 to cut in half The number of people hungry around the world based on percentage of population. I think it's now we're looking out at a much more difficult future. We're looking at a future defined by climate change where it's hotter, it's drier, it's more erratic. To grow food, we see that in American agriculture, with agricultural productivity growth falling, we see that around the world with actual agricultural production falling. And so this, the world needs a reboot here. That's why this meeting is even more important, I would say than prior ones. And, frankly, we need to reimagine our politics to say let's get serious again about recognizing that America has always been the world's leader on fighting hunger. Let's do it. Again. We have the skill and the will, and the sense of moral purpose to get that done.

[Yeager] Thank you so very much. Appreciate it.

[Shah] Thanks for having me.

[Yeager] My thanks to Raj Shah for his time here on the podcast. If you have feedback for the program, send it as an email MarkettoMarket@IowaPBS.org. A little looking ahead to next week, we are going to stay here at the World Food Prize in the Borlaug Dialogues but we're going to talk about the State Department. So it's kind of a double package episode with two different guests. We'll see you next time. Bye bye.