He then embarked on a decade of work to build a reserve that aimed to be a center of cheetah research and conservation, but said the results had been disappointing. He said he had hoped to establish that cheetahs could thrive on small private reserves without depleting expensive game stocks. But he found that the cats killed for sport, even when they were so stuffed from feasting on prey that they practically waddled. And the research did not take off. A state-of-the-art laboratory on the reserve sits unused.
“There are a lot of politics, a lot of turf, a lot of egos, and I think also part of it was that I’m an outsider,” he said.
But Buffett’s connection to the dun-and-olive landscape of Limpopo has become part of the campaign against hunger his foundation is engaged in across Africa. It has paid for 3,723 hectares of farmland not far from the cheetah reserve. Plant researchers there are now developing drought-tolerant varieties of maize.
And Buffett, who spends so much time in South Africa that he has permanent residency, is driving one of those auto-steer tractors he loves into the fields, planting crops that he hopes will yield improved seeds for African farmers.
A Republican and a farmer, he has a maverick take on the continent’s agricultural challenges — for example, he is a skeptic about subsidies for seed and fertilizer. In recent years, his foundation, which accepts no unsolicited proposals, has added ambitious projects related to clean water and increased farm productivity.
But so far Buffett’s approach has not reached a broad audience. His foundation has no Web site and a staff of only eight. And he does not go to conferences where experts debate policy.
“I don’t see him and his ideas out there very much,” said Julie Howard, executive director of the Washington-based Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty in Africa. “He’s not reclusive, but he’s a kind of to-the-ground person.”
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