John's helicopter trip with Bill Gates to World Food Programme maize farmers in Ethiopia (2014)
story · status: told 2×, last update 2014 · last event: update (2014-09-02)
On his July 2014 trip to Ethiopia John overcame his fear of heights to fly in a helicopter with Bill Gates to visit maize farmers working with the World Food Programme. He told of it in two videos that summer, the second on agriculture in the developing world.
Part of: John's visit to rural health care in Ethiopia with the Gates Foundation (2014)
Told alongside: John: make a bunch of videos from his East Africa trip with Bill Gates (2014) · John: tell Hank about his helicopter ride with Bill Gates (2014)
About: Bill Gates, World Food Programme, Ethiopia
| date | event | what | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-07-29 | told | John mentions overcoming his tremendous fear of heights to fly in a helicopter with Bill Gates. | Listen: Thoughts from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 00:02:57 |
| 2014-08-26 (happened 2014-07) | told | John tells of flying with Bill Gates to visit WFP maize farmers in Ethiopia, meeting a woman farmer and corn sorters. | Food Is Weird: Understanding Agriculture in the Developing World 00:00:26 |
| 2014-09-02 | update | Sarah reassured John that nerdfighters are forgiving and few outside Nerdfighteria would see an agriculture video; within a day Bill Gates, the WFP head and Ethiopia's foreign minister had seen it. (playful) | MORTIFICATION 00:01:49 |
What is said about it
8 statements, by date (the events above are the turns of the thread; these are the details).
- 2014-07-29 · Listen: Thoughts from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — John says he hung out with Bill Gates, whom he calls brilliant, overcame his fear of heights to fly in a helicopter with him, and will talk about it in the coming weeks. — 00:02:57
- 2014-08-26 · Food Is Weird: Understanding Agriculture in the Developing World — John: From the helicopter, on the way to visit farmers working with the World Food Program, John saw families tilling individual plots, a way into agricultural economics. — 00:00:26
- 2014-08-26 · Food Is Weird: Understanding Agriculture in the Developing World — John: A World Food Program project in Ethiopia guarantees farmers a fair price for however much corn they produce, with the surplus going to food aid. — 00:04:07
- 2014-08-26 · Food Is Weird: Understanding Agriculture in the Developing World — John: The WFP contract lets farmers get loans for good seed and fertilizer, since the UN is good for its debts; yields rise, there's more food and less malnutrition. — 00:04:29
- 2014-08-26 · Food Is Weird: Understanding Agriculture in the Developing World — John met a woman who went from receiving US food aid to producing it, but Gates and Desmond-Hellmann learned her land's income all goes to her husband; she is a founding member of a farmers' cooperative. — 00:04:53
- 2014-08-26 · Food Is Weird: Understanding Agriculture in the Developing World — John: Higher yields and family income are good, but the project's mission of empowering women farmers to keep their proceeds isn't as effective. — 00:05:10
- 2014-08-26 · Food Is Weird: Understanding Agriculture in the Developing World — John: Women sorting corn by hand to WFP purity standards told John, contrary to what he'd been told, that it was their primary, exhausting work but the money was pretty good; loaders made about five dollars a day. — 00:05:25
- 2014-08-26 · Food Is Weird: Understanding Agriculture in the Developing World — John thinks the WFP project is interesting and can help, but he might be wrong; other things would help too, such as Ethiopia lifting its ban on corn exports. (hedged) — 00:06:28