Latest interview: Roger Thurow, author of Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in the Age of Plenty. He’s a man on a mission – having left a 30 year reporting career at the Wall Street Journal to work on international agricultural policy full-time.  It was all about Africa, he told me – the Green Revolution of the 1970′s that increased farming yield never made it to the motherland and the food aid and international development and trade policies are self-interested and do not feed hungry people in the long-term.

Turns out that the Gates Foundation and their billions brought the Green Revolution back to life in Africa, supporting a variety of projects that help farmers have a higher yield.  The irony, he told me, is that the majority of starving people are small farmers themselves.  I asked a critical question about the role of the world bank and IMF in funding projects and increasing third world debt to moderize farming – and his response was straightforward.  Bottom line, farmers must have the capital, sometimes just $50, to moderize their process.  If they can, they can feed local folks.

According to him, African nations are taking up regional strategies that may make a difference.  And he reserved his greatest optimism for President Obama’s 31 words at the inauguration and subsequent proposals with complementary bills in Congress that would direct billions of US dollars toward key agricultural projects that will make a difference.

Let’s hope he’s right.