By Loch Adamson Gary Vaughan-Smith is no slouch at growing assets. As head of ABN Amro Asset Management’s alternative investment group, he boosted assets from less than $50 million to more than $5 billion in just five years. Now he wants to apply the same skill to growing crops. As a founding partner of London-based SilverStreet Capital, he aims to buy up farms in Africa; raise productivity by using sustainable agriculture, such as no-till farming; and sell the produce domestically. He also wants to teach local farmers better techniques. “The problems with food production in Africa arise from the low productivity on the part of small-scale farms — and the majority of Africa’s farms are small-scale,” says Vaughan-Smith. “We thought that if we could improve that scenario by training people to farm more effectively and getting productivity up, agricultural communities across the region could boom.”