Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations (Gates Ag One) is a non-profit organization that accelerates breakthrough agricultural research to meet the urgent and neglected needs of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations Opens New Office in St. Louis
April 3, 2024
Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations (Gates Ag One) has officially opened its home office in the Cortex Innovation District, an internationally recognized hub for innovation and entrepreneurship in St. Louis, Missouri.
Joe Cornelius,
Chief Executive Officer
As CEO of Gates Ag One, Joe sets a visionary and strategic course for our efforts to champion innovations and cultivate global networks that prioritize the needs of smallholder farmers.
Improving the biology of crops offers solutions that are affordable, renewable and scalable for African smallholders.
– Joe Cornelius, Ph.D., CEO of Gates Ag One via Agri-Pulse
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations (Gates Ag One)?
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- Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations, also known as Gates Ag One, was created to accelerate the most promising agricultural breakthroughs and innovations in reaching – and benefiting – smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
- As a nonprofit affiliate of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we act like an agricultural innovation accelerator, connecting what is currently a fragmented R&D pipeline for smallholders.
- We champion a coordinated, networked approach to innovation that generates and shares knowledge freely, believing that collaboration creates the best results.
- Our operating model is therefore underpinned by dynamic partnerships, both with organizations local to our headquarters in St. Louis, MO, such as the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, as well as leading institutions around the world.
- What innovations does Gates Ag One focus on?
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- Gates Ag One is demand driven, focused on investing in areas with the greatest potential for impact that provide smallholder farmers with the options that best meet their needs.
- We are most interested in innovations that lead to improved varieties of six priority crops:
- Cassava, one of the most important crops to smallholder farmers and African diets.
- Cowpea, an all-purpose crop that holds impressive capacity to nourish people, livestock, and the soil.
- Maize, the most abundantly produced cereal crop in the world, used for food, feed and fuel.
- Rice, the bedrock of food security for millions.
- Soybean, a crucial commodity crop for economic development and a global source of protein and plant-based oil.
- Sorghum, an important crop for smallholder farmer adaptation to climate change, particularly in the world’s arid regions.
- Our initial portfolio of research grants is focused on taking advantage of plant biology to increase the productivity and resilience of crops that are central to smallholder agricultural systems. These first projects include:
- Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE), which targets improvements in photosynthesis, given just 1% of sunlight is currently converted to support plant growth.
- Enabling Nutrient Symbioses in Agriculture (ENSA), a Cambridge University-led project focused on maximizing naturally occurring processes to enhance nutrient uptake.
- Cassava Source-Sink (CASS), which unites researchers from 11 institutions around the world to optimize cassava physiology.
- We also work with partners to protect intellectual property to ensure that promising early-stage innovations can ultimately be translated into products beneficial to smallholder farmers in line with Global Access principles.
Explore Our Crops at a Glance
Achieving gender equality at the vanguard of science is particularly important for tackling the global challenges of food security and poverty.
– Brigitte Weston Ph.D.,
Director, Product Development of Gates Ag One via AWIS
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