Gates Ag One: The Recolonisation of Agriculture

In January 2020, the Gates foundation launched “The Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations LLC”, also known as “Gates Ag One”. Gates Ag One was formulated to be a subsidiary of the Gates Foundation and is to be led by Joe Cornelius, the previous director of the BMGF Global Growth & Opportunity Division. Cornelius is a former food, nutrition and technology development executive at Bayer Crop Science and in the 1990s was Director for International Development at Monsanto.^[1]

Gates Ag One is being hailed as a new non-profit to “bring scientific breakthroughs to smallholder farmers whose yields are threatened by the effects of climate change” and shrink the supposed ‘productivity gaps’ present in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.^[2] It will work with the Gates Foundation’s Agricultural Development Team and other partners across sectors to “accelerate the development of innovations” that are “needed to improve crop productivity and help smallholder farmers, the majority of whom are women, adapt to climate change”.^[3]