I'm here with Howard Buffett, and I'm a big fan of you and your father and your investing acumen, but also your incredible philanthropy. And we're here. I'm Diane Francis. I'm with the National Post, Kev Post. I'm a journalist and a broadcaster, and I've spent many, many, many visits in Ukraine, and I write about it all the time. So I'm pleased to be able to interview you here about why you have and how you are helping Ukraine.
And I'm glad to be here. Thank you.
So can you go through the genesis of your commitment and how you feel now about the war?
Well, I think back to April 2022 when I made my first trip there after the full-scale invasion, and you know, our motto kind of at our foundation is that we need to show up. I mean, there's no way you can understand the circumstances, understand the suffering, to see what's happening on the ground unless you're there. So we got there as early as we could, which to me was a little late, but we got there in April, and we were able to see, of course, a huge exodus of people leaving Ukraine because of the shelling and the Russian aggression. And then, you know, one of the things I always do when I'm there is I stop and talk to farmers. So we would find farmers out in the field and stop and talk to them. So it was really, it was an introduction for me in the beginning, but the reason we went was primarily because we knew that it was going to be a huge event, much bigger than I ever imagined. You know, looking back today, it's much larger than what I thought it was going to be, but we knew that it would impact food security around the world. We knew it was going to create millions of refugees. We knew there would be humanitarian causes that we could address with the foundation. So we were there really originally to just figure out, you know, what was happening and what could we do that would be worthwhile to support Ukraine.
What has been the impact on the prices of the things, the commodities that Ukraine ships? And of course there was interruption in shipping which got opened up and so on. Can you take me just briefly through what effect it's had on food supply?
The immediate effect in the first year of the war was the food basket in Western Africa was increased by 50%. So you're looking, you know, using that as an example, you already have countries that have, you know, high levels of food insecurity, food prices that many people can't afford. So when you increase something by even a small amount, it has a big impact. But when you, you know, increase something by 50%, it's significant. So it had a lot to do with people's ability to meet their food needs in places like Africa. The best example I can give you is we have a big program in Rwanda with thousands of small farmers, and these are farmers that farm, you know, less than half an acre. And I was sitting there last year, and maybe a year and a half ago, and I was asking one of the farmers, you know, how are things going? He says, 'This is the best year we've ever had.' And I said, 'Why?' And he says, 'Well, we've got the highest corn prices we've ever seen. I mean, by far.' And I said, 'Why? Do you have good range? Did you, you know, were you able to get access to better fertilizer?' He says, 'Oh, no. It's the war in Ukraine.' And so you think the farmer is getting the best prices of corn he's ever had, but somebody's paying for that. So there's a lot of people that can't afford it. So that was, to me, that was like the most personal example I have ever experienced because these are farmers who are helping, but at the same time they are benefiting from all the pain and suffering and aggression in Ukraine.
So that, of course, that underlying commitment to food security worldwide led you to Ukraine and to see what you could do so that more production could occur, or the Russians could stop impeding it so that prices would settle down. And also, did you get involved with the farmers themselves and the farms and helping them?
Well, yeah. When I started looking at agriculture during the war, I look at how does the farmer survive. And so you have, you know, a hundred thousand pieces of equipment that have been destroyed, you know, tens of thousands of tons of grain that was stolen, and crops that are destroyed. And they're still destroying crops today. I mean, one of the favorite things that the Russians like to do is to fly drones into wheat fields when they're ready to cut and set them on fire. Pretty hard to stop it. So it's never stopped. It's gotten worse. So we did something. It was kind of high risk at the time. But that in April of 2022, I was sitting at dinner. I think it was the second night I was there, or first or second night, and I was sitting with somebody from the government, and I said, you know, your wheat office is not that far away, and how are you going to do this? And you got a lot of farmers that lost equipment. You have farmers that can't, you know, afford everything. And I got, I sent an email to the president of John Deere, who I knew at the time, and I just said, 'How many combines do you have on the continent of Europe? Not, I don't want anything from you. I want to know what you can deliver to me in the next two to three weeks.' And then I sent a text to my son, who's on the Case New Holland board, which in our family is like, you know, not so good because I'm a John Deere guy. But anyway, I sent up the text, and they both found about 15 or 20 combines. And the ironic thing about the John Deere ones was they were all destined for Russia, and now they weren't going.
Oh, I love that. So even better.
So we got the, we got 30, 40 combines into the country in literally three weeks. I didn't know what we were going to do with them. There was a guy there who, he's in the parliament, but he's also big in agriculture, and he put together a team, and we've now planted and harvested over a million and a half acres, and 60-some percent of that is out in the east. Well, I mean, you could start up Sumy and come down around the east, but so that was one program we did. We've done, we've done a number of other programs with Mercy Corps and with some seed distribution. But during war, I mean, you're just trying to survive, and that's what we're trying to do.
What's most concerning to myself when I found out about it, and many other people, and I'm sure you're involved in this, is that Russia is such an evil country that they have been mining and trying to permanently impair or disable the farmland in Ukraine. And it's an enormous amount of acreage. It has to be demined. It would cost billions of dollars to do that. I find it beyond shocking. Are you involved in the demining?
Yeah. The only reason I don't find it shocking is because it's Russia. But yeah, so we're very involved in demining. We would, just to put in perspective, not for any other reason, but we'd be the second largest funder behind the United States government for support of demining efforts.
And we've done some very innovative things. We have four CAT D6 machines running autonomously with a much larger system that we kind of put together. We have incredible support from like Kenzie Manufacturing, John Deere, Caterpillar. They've all stepped up. These are not commercial products. These are not things we're going to go out and sell and make a lot of money on, but they're helping us figure out how we can demine faster and more efficiently and safer. And so we have a whole system that we've developed. And then, you know, we're supporting Halo and FSD and MAG and all the big demining organizations that are there. They have the expertise, and you know, they have the teams, and they're out doing it. But the really maddening thing, and that's not even strong enough, is in the last month or two, Russia has targeted several different demining teams and killed some of the deminers. They've blown up some of the equipment. They thought that if you were demining within, you know, at least the distance of 30 kilometers, you were safe. And now they're starting to hit beyond that with the drones. So, you know, there's just no, there's nothing that Russia won't do to try to hurt Ukraine and try to hurt the progress in, and even demining, which is a humanitarian effort.
So you're also involved in humanitarian aid, and what else are you helping Ukraine with?
So we've done a lot with the National Police. We bought them very early on 18 rapid DNA machines. They have 190,000 war crimes they're trying to solve in Ukraine today, and every day they get more, every day. So we're helping them with that. We're helping with an organization that is training the police and working with the police. They have some really well-trained police officers on investigations, but they are overwhelmed, so they need help. So we're working on war crimes. We're working specifically on agricultural war crimes as well. We have provided, I think by the end of the year, it'll be over 500 million meals to people. Much of it, some IDPs, but much of it is on the front line in the top five or six OLAs there. And then we've tried to be responsive to needs that come up, things that, you know, we typically wouldn't do. Ukraine is a big exception for us, and almost half of what we're doing, because we work in food security, conflict mitigation, and fighting human trafficking. Well, typically we would stay very much in those missions, but you know, we've built bridges, we've built feeding centers for schools, we've built bomb shelters, we've done all these things that typically just wouldn't fit really into what we do.
And you made a point, I believe, earlier. You know, people don't use this term very often, but Putin has stated that he's committing genocide. I mean, he has come out and said this. He has said, 'I'm going to destroy Ukraine. I'm going to destroy the Ukrainian people. I'm going to destroy their culture, their history.' And so when things happen like the publishing house got bombed, Sheldon and Harkfe, we rebuild it. We don't do health and medical primarily, although we've done a really cool project with Superhumans for prosthetics. But when the children's hospital got bombed, we stepped up and said, 'What equipment do you need? We're buying.' So we have tried to be very responsive in terms of the things that are important, and sometimes being important is defined differently because it is defying Russia's ability to try to destroy Ukraine.
You've given over a billion dollars.
To Ukraine, and that's fantastic. But it's not enough. I think you're a saint. What I also wanted to say, though, is that I'm also originally American. You are American. I believe that the American people are totally on the side of Ukraine. And you know, we grew up realizing how evil Russia was. Why is it that the powers that be have been playing around? And you know, I just don't understand why Vance and others, I don't want to get into personalities, are dragging their feet on this. This to me is a good versus evil war.
I would define it the same way. I think that politics is a funny thing because it can be driven by different agendas. I say this carefully, but you have a property developer that is negotiating with a war criminal, and he thinks that Putin's not a bad guy. There's a total misdirection here. There's a total misunderstanding. I mean, Putin is a terrible person. He's not just a war criminal. He will kill anybody that is, you know, in his way. He will kill his own people. So the question is, how is it always being the leaders of the free world, how is it that we can't step up and defend a country that is fighting for their democracy? I don't have the answer for that because I don't think there's a logical answer. We have an obligation to protect the principles and values that we are fortunate enough to live by and live with. And we're failing to do that. The Biden administration failed miserably in several ways. And so this is not just about one administration or another administration. This is about what actions are people willing to take. And it's incredible to watch it unfold because this is like watching World War II in 1938 or 1936 or something. I don't know what date it is, but it's clearly leading us into a world war because we're not paying attention, or we're not being serious, or not making the commitment that's required to make. And we've made some big mistakes.
