The annual World Food Prize (WFP) events recognize the great contributors to Agriculture and Food Security in the world. There is much activity related to the prize and its associated wonderful ceremonies. This year’s attendance was about 1200 people. The winner was Simon Groot of the Netherlands who contributed enormously to global nutrition through better seeds for vegetables. The WFP is also linked to a week of seminars, lectures and debates in honor of the great late Norman Borlaug, who founded the WFP.
Borlaug was awarded the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for having launched the green revolution that saved many hundreds of millions of people from hunger and starvation (mostly in India and other parts of Asia). But he reflected that there was no Nobel Prize for Agriculture and Food Security, and he convinced the late John Ruan to fund the creation of such a prize. And they were very lucky to have convinced Ambassador Kenneth Quin to become the CEO of the WFP The first winner of the WFP was India’s great M.S. Swaminathan.
This year was an exceptional event because it was the 20th and last year for Ambassador Kenneth Quin as CEO of the WFP. He has certainly brilliantly succeeded in making the WFP the premier prize for Agriculture and Food Security, exactly as the late Norman Borlaug and John Ruan wanted it be.