<p>The New Year is bringing new ideas and concerns to agricultural research. Bill Gates, in his 2012 Annual Letter, is putting his own personal emphasis on the possibilities for progress in agricultural research and bringing those possibilities and tools to those farmers, who can use them most. The foundation has devoted almost $2 billion to helping poor farm families, largely led by women, boost their productivity and their ability to preserve the land for future generations, according to the letter. The funds go to many different areas of innovative farming, including sustainable land management, educating farmers and connecting farmers to functioning markets. About 15 percent of the international population lives in extreme poverty. The irony, Mr. gates reflects, is that most of them live and work on farms, but cannot produce enough food to live on.<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding"> Bill Gates, in the 2012 Annual Letter, states, "We can be more innovative about delivering solutions that already exist to the farmers who need them. Knowledge about managing soil and tools like drip irrigation can help poor farmers grow more food today. We can also discover new approaches and create new tools to fundamentally transform farmers’ lives. But we won’t advance if we don’t continue to fund agricultural innovation, and I am very worried about where those funds will come from in the current economic and political climate."</p><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">
