Howard Graham Buffett

Howard Graham Buffett
Buffett in 2011
Born	(1954-12-16) December 16, 1954
Residence	Decatur, Illinois
Spouse(s)	Marcia Sue Duncan (1977-?; divorced) Devon G. Buffett
Children	Howard Warren Buffett
Parent(s)	Warren Buffett Susan Thompson
Relatives	Howard Buffett (grandfather) Susan Alice Buffett (sister) Peter Buffett (brother) Doris Buffett (Aunt)

Howard Graham Buffett (born December 16, 1954) is an American businessman, former politician, philanthropist, photographer, farmer, and conservationist.^[1] He is the middle child of billionaire investor Warren Buffett. He is named after Howard Buffett, his grandfather, and Benjamin Graham, Warren Buffett's favorite professor.

Personal life

Howard G. Buffett grew up in Omaha, Nebraska with two siblings: older sister Susan and younger brother Peter. He has been active in business, politics, agriculture, conservation, photography, and philanthropy. In August 1977, he married Marcia Sue Duncan.^[2] Also in 1977, he began farming in Tekamah, Nebraska.^[3] His father purchased the property for $760,000 and charged him rent.^[4] Howard later married Devon Morse, born Devon Armour Goss first husband Robert Moreton Morse, American construction engineering executive, born on December 6, 1937 in Pasadena, California, married December 29, 1966, divorced 1982. Children: Erin Christian, Heather Kirsten, Chelsea Armour, Megan Moreton). On October 14, 1983, they had a son, Howard Warren Buffett. Buffett currently resides in Decatur, Illinois, from where he oversees a 1,500-acre (6.1 km²) family farm in Pana, Illinois and three foundation-operated research farms, including over 1,500 acres in Arizona, and 9,200 acres in South Africa.^[1][5] He is an advocate of no-till conservation agriculture.^[3]

Business

Buffett was Corporate Vice President and Assistant to the Chairman of Archer Daniels Midland Company from 1992 to 1995, Director of Archer Daniels Midland Company from 1991 to 1995, Director of the Board of Directors of The GSI Group from 1995 to 2001, Director of ConAgra Foods from 2002 to 2006, Director of Agro Tech Foods Ltd. until October 26, 2006, and Director at Sloan Implement. He became a Lindsay Corporation director in 1995, served as Chairman for a year from 2002 to 2003.^[6][7] and in 2008, announced he would let his term as a director expire in January 2010.^[8]

He is, as of 1992, a director of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc., and President of Buffett Farms.^[6]

Howard G. Buffett has been a Director of The Coca-Cola Company since December 9, 2010. From 1993 to 2004 he was a director of Coca-Cola Enterprises, the world's largest Coca-Cola Bottler.^[9]

In December 2011, Warren Buffett told CBS News that he would like his son Howard to succeed him as Berkshire Hathaway's non-executive chairman.^[10]

Politics

Buffett was a County Commissioner of Douglas County, Nebraska, from 1989 to 1992, and Chairman of the Nebraska Ethanol Authority and Development Board from 1989 to 1991.

He is a member of the Board of the Commission on Presidential Debates (the CPD).

Sheriff

Buffett was sworn in as Sheriff of Macon County, Illinois on Friday, September 15, 2017.^[11] He was selected to fill the remaining term of office after the resignation of former Sheriff Thomas Schneider. Buffett has been an active volunteer with the Macon County Sheriff's Office for several years, having been appointed Undersheriff by Schneider. Buffett, through the Howard G. Buffett Foundation has donated several million dollars to various law enforcement agencies and projects throughout central Illinois.

Snopes.com reported in early May 2018 that the Illinois newspaper The Pantagraph posed this question in a headline: If Illinois legalizes marijuana, what happens to pot-sniffing dogs?

The article noted the potential financial hardship that could be wrought against police departments in Illinois should voters approve the legalization of cannabis — a question that may be on the ballot in November.

The claims of potential financial hardship on police departments rely primarily on the testimony of Macon County Sheriff Howard Buffett, (the same Buffett noted in this Wikipedia entry) who told the paper: "The biggest thing for law enforcement is, you’re going to have to replace all of your dogs."

Buffett’s private foundation paid $2.2 million in 2016 to support K-9 units in 33 counties across Illinois.

Representatives of Snopes.com spoke with representatives of two major police forces in jurisdictions that have experienced the legalization of marijuana — the Denver Police Department and the Seattle Police Department — and both departments vigorously disputed the argument presented by Buffett and Chad Larner, director of the K-9 Training Academy in Macon County, Ill., which is a direct beneficiary of Buffet’s foundation.

On Larner’s claim that these animals are "trained not to be social" and therefore unable to be cared for after their service, a spokesperson for the Denver PD told us via e-mail that their dogs are not trained against being social: "We actually want them to be people friendly, it puts people at ease around the dogs and this leads to more effective deployments."

The notion that these dogs would have to be euthanized because they would not be social enough to find a home in retirement was equally confounding to the Seattle PD, in part because the dogs (in both Seattle and Denver and elsewhere) live full-time with their handlers, and continue to do so after their retirement.

Seattle PD spokesman Sean Whitcomb spoke to us by phone, telling us, "That’s nonsense. The dogs that we would retire would stay with the handler."

The idea that the dogs would require active retraining, or would need to be relieved of service if the law changed, is also disputed by both departments. The Denver PD told us they still retain dogs that had been trained prior to legalization: "We can only speak to what we do at the Denver Police Department. We do not euthanize our dogs, we would never do that. As these dogs have been retired (they usually stay with their police handlers and become their family pets) we purchased new dogs."

Seattle’s spokesman Whitcomb, who described the arguments presented by the Macon County Sheriff as "absurd," told us — similarly — that the Seattle PD does not "retrain" their dogs either, and that they remain part of their force.

Therefore, Snopes.com states that the claim that legalization would force drug dogs to be euthanized is a bad-faith argument rooted in logical fallacies that confound police forces experienced in legalized marijuana. As such, Snopes ranks Buffet’s claim as false.

Media

Buffett has published eight books on conservation, wildlife, and the human condition, and has written articles and opinion pieces for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.^[12] In 1996, Harvard published his thesis, The Partnership of Biodiversity and High-Yield Agricultural Production.

The April 2014 edition of The Rotarian magazine featured an 8-page article covering a brief history of Buffett's organization and touching upon some past successes, current projects and future goals. [29]

Books

In 2000, Buffett co-produced a book of photography with Colin Mead, Images of the Wild, an information source for traveling to wildlife areas in North America and Africa.^[13]

In 2001, he wrote On The Edge: Balancing Earth's Resources which focused on preserving world biodiversity, species and habitats. Former Senator Paul Simon authored the foreword.^[13]

In 2002, Buffett wrote Tapestry of Life, a compilation of portraits taken in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, and other countries with deep poverty and human need.^[13] Tom Brokaw authored the foreword. Also in 2002, he published Taking Care of Our World, a book that teaches children about ecology.^[13]

In 2003, he co-wrote Spots Before Your Eyes with Ann van Dyk. The foreword was authored by Dr. Jane Goodall. Spots Before Your Eyes presents history and facts about the cheetah species.^[13]

In 2005, he published Threatened Kingdom: The Story of the Mountain Gorilla which provides information about the mountain gorilla's habitat and the challenges facing the species.^[13]

In 2009, he wrote Fragile: The Human Condition with the support of National Geographic. The foreword was authored by Shakira Mebarak. Fragile: The Human Condition is the documentation of life stories in sixty-five countries.^[14][15]

In 2013, he co-wrote the New York Times Bestseller Forty Chances: Finding Hope in a Hungry World with his son Howard Warren Buffett.^[16] The foreword was authored by Warren Buffett.^[17]

In 2018, he wrote Our 50-State Border Crisis: How the Mexican Border Fuels the Drug Epidemic Across America, with a foreword by Heidi Heitkamp and a preface by Cindy McCain.^[18]

Philanthropy

Buffett serves or has served on the National Geographic Council of Advisors, World Wildlife Fund National Council, Cougar Fund, Illinois and Nebraska Chapters of the Nature Conservancy, Ecotrust, and the Africa Foundation. Buffett founded the Nature Conservation Trust, a non-profit Trust in South Africa to support cheetah conservation, the International Cheetah Conservation Foundation,^[19] and was a Founding Director of The Cougar Fund. In October 2007, Buffett was named a Goodwill Ambassador Against Hunger by the United Nations World Food Programme.^[20][21] He later joined the boards of the Barefoot Foundation and the ONE Campaign.^[20][22] In March 2010, Buffett became a member of the Eastern Congo Initiative founded by Ben Affleck. "I joined Ben in this effort because I believe strongly in investing in sustainable solutions to humanitarian challenges," he said.^[23] The following year in 2011, Buffett teamed up with the Bridgeway Foundation to fund a program.^[24]

Awards

Buffett has received the Order of the Aztec Eagle Award, the highest honor bestowed on a foreign citizen by the Mexican Government, an honorary PhD from Lincoln College and Honorary Doctorate of Human Letters from Penn State University.^[28][29] and has been recognized by the Inter-American Institute for Co-operation in Agriculture as one of the most distinguished individuals in agriculture. He has also won the Will Owen Jones Distinguished Journalist of the Year Award, World Ecology Award, George McGovern Leadership Award, National Farmers Union Meritorious Service to Humanity Award, Columbia University Global Leadership Award, Leader in Agriculture Award from Agriculture Future of America, and Special Service Award from the Association for International Agriculture and Rural Development, and the International Quality of Life Award.^[28][30] Buffet was among the nine people who were awarded the Igihango medal by Rwandan President Paul Kagame in 2017.^[31][32]

See also

• Warren Buffett (father)
• Susan Buffett (mother)
• Peter Buffett (brother)
• Astrid Menks Buffett (stepmother)
• Howard Warren Buffett (son)

References

External links

• Atlantic profile
• Bloomberg video: Howard G. Buffett interview (2011) on world agriculture, his endeavors, his philosophy.
• Wall Street Journal Video: Howard Buffett is working against African famine.
• Website Of Howard Graham Buffett