2013
Howard G. Buffett grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has been active in agriculture, business, conservation, philanthropy, photography, and politics. He currently spends the majority of his time overseeing the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, a private charitable foundation. Buffett operates a 1,500-acre family farm in central Illinois and also oversees three foundation-operated research farms: 1,400 acres in Arizona, 4,000 acres in Illinois, and 9,200 acres in South Africa.
Buffett has served in a number of public positions, including the Douglas County (Nebraska) Board of Commissioners, two committees for the Office of the United States Trade Representative, and chairman of the Nebraska Ethanol Authority and Develop-ment Board. Additionally, he has held senior executive positions at Archer Daniels Midland Company and The GSI Group.
Buffett currently serves on the corporate boards of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., an investment holding company; The Coca-Cola Company, the world's largest beverage company; Lindsay Corporation, a worldwide leader in the manufacturing of agricultural irrigation products; and Sloan Implement, a privately owned distributor of John Deere agricultural equipment. He has served on the boards of Archer Daniels Midland, a leading global food processor; Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc., the largest Coca-Cola bottler in the world; ConAgra Foods, one of North America's largest food service manufacturers and retail food suppliers; and Agro Tech Foods, a publicly traded food manufacturing company in India. Buffett serves, or has served, on numerous non-profit boards.
In 1997, he was appointed as a member of the Commission on Presidential Debates. He received the Aztec Eagle Award from the President of Mexico in 2000, the highest honor bestowed on a foreign citizen by the Government of Mexico, and in 2002, he was recognized by the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture as one of the most distinguished individuals in the field of agriculture. In 2005, he received the Will Owen Jones Distinguished Journalist of the Year Award, and in 2007, he was appointed a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador Against Hunger, on behalf of the World Food Programme. In 2011, Buffett was awarded the Triumph of Agriculture Exposition Agri Award, the World Ecology Award, and the George McGovern Leadership Award. In 2012, he was awarded the National Farmers Union Meritorious Service to Humanity Award, the Columbia University Global Leadership Award, an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Pennsylvania State University, the Leader in Agriculture Award from Agriculture Future of America, and the Special Service Award from the Association for International Agriculture and Rural Development.
Having dedicated his life to addressing global food insecurity and conservation, Buffett has traveled to 130 countries documenting the challenges of preserving our biodiversity while providing adequate resources to meet the needs of a growing global population. In the process, he has authored several books on conservation, wildlife, and the human condition, the most recent entitled 40 Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World.
