An end to hunger could be a Buffett away

Adam Shell | USA TODAY

NEW YORK — Howard G. Buffett has seen the face of hunger up close. He has the pictures, taken from his own camera, and a new book, 40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World, to prove that hunger is as abundant in some places on Earth as food is plentiful in a suburban American ShopRite.

Howard G. Buffett, the 58-year-old son of billionaire investor and fellow philanthropist Warren Buffett, knows the haunting stare of the undernourished. He has seen the look in the long lines snaking around a soup kitchen in Decatur, Ill. In the "hollow and tortured" eyes of a mom holding her emaciated and dying 12-year-old son in drought-stricken Ethiopia. In Totonicapan, Guatemala, where an 11-year-old girl named Maria was draping freshly picked corn over the rafters of her metal roof to keep it away from rodents.

Howard Buffett, a farmer and philanthropist who knows the importance of a good harvest and a nutritious meal, doesn't just write checks from his farm in central Illinois. He spends a lot of his time in poor, inhospitable places around the globe armed with seeds and hope in a quest to help people who have little or nothing to eat.

"You got to show up," he says, before proudly recounting a visit to the East Congo where a woman interrupted a rebel leader to remind him that Howard Buffett has "shown up three times, and no else has shown up once" to help.

"I don't want to let these people down," says Howard Buffett. "They have been let down by so many other people."

40 Chances, published Tuesday by Simon & Schuster, chronicles his first steps on this long journey in 40 essays that feature the hungry, those like him helping the hungry, and the places where people fight for their survival one morsel at a time.

The genesis of the book's title is derived from the idea that every farmer has 40 chances, or 40 growing seasons, to produce the best crop possible. "That's the point: We don't get to do this forever," Howard Buffett says.

He is fighting a 40-year war against hunger. But he carries a camera instead of a gun. Seeds instead of bullets. And views the Earth's soil as a place to grow food, rather than just a spot to bury people who die of starvation.

But he also comes armed with money, $3 billion in fact. That fat sum came to him via the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the organization funded by his famous dad back in 2006. The money is to be parsed out over a four-decade span to help plant the seeds of a sustainable global food supply.

And Warren Buffett, who Forbes magazine says is the second richest man in the world, with a net worth of $58.5 billion, says he's glad his son is following his passion and taking on a challenge most people would not tackle.

"I cheered. It was the logical thing for him to do," says Warren Buffett, referring to his son's decision to wage war with hunger. "(My kids) are better off working on things they have a passion for and not having me assign" what to tackle.

Giving back to the community, Warren Buffett says, is the right thing to do.

"It's almost ridiculous not to," Warren Buffett says. "I have everything in life I could possibly want. I have a huge amount of wealth that has no utility to me, and it can change the lives of other people. I could build a pyramid to myself and do all kinds of crazy things. But when you have been as lucky as I have been, and you have everything you want, you better give the rest back to society."

Howard G. Buffett's goal and that of his own son, Howard W. Buffett, who also contributes to the book, is to someday weed out the two calling cards of hunger: the swollen belly and emaciation.

"Part of what is so great about 40 Chances," says 30-year-old Howard W. Buffett, "is we are telling stories, showing those photos and trying to show the world what is happening all around the globe."

But his dad, Howard G. Buffett, says winning the fight against hunger won't be easy. "You will never stamp it out 100%," he says. "That is just being unrealistic."

Warren Buffett says there are limits to philanthropy, no matter how much money you throw at a problem, especially big ones.

"In philanthropy, you are looking at problems that have withstood money and intellect in the past," says the billionaire investor known as the Oracle of Omaha. "They are the most difficult problems. So you are going to fail more. You have to have a tolerance for failure if you are going to do important things."