18 June 2010

The World Food Prize — What Is It?

John Ruan, World Food Prize benefactor, left, and Norman Borlaug

By Phillip Kurata
Staff Writer

Washington — When Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, the citation praised him for “providing bread for a hungry world.” Borlaug was honored for developing high-yield strains of wheat that averted famine in Asia in the 1960s.

Yet, in his acceptance speech, he said there were many others who deserved the award as much as he did.

In fact, Borlaug recommended to the Nobel committee that it create an additional prize, one devoted to food and agriculture. The committee turned him down, saying restrictions in the will of Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and the creator of the prizes, ruled out another award.

So Borlaug decided to create “the equivalent of the Nobel Prize” for food.

After he gained financial backing from what was then the General Foods Corporation, the first World Food Prize was awarded in 1987.

The prize faced extinction in 1990 when General Foods withdrew its sponsorship. A self-made business tycoon from Iowa, John Ruan, came to its rescue, taking financial responsibility for the prize and moving the foundation headquarters to Des Moines, Iowa. Ruan, like Borlaug, was born in 1914. Ruan had turned a one-truck gravel hauling business into a trucking empire with more than 20,000 trucks. His grandson, John Ruan III, heads the foundation today.

Thirty-three people from all over the world have won the World Food Prize, most of them scientists, but also businessmen, politicians and, this year, a clergyman, David Beckmann, and an activist, Jo Luck. Two laureates figured out ways to sterilize insects that were killing cattle. Another taught rural women in Bangladesh and India how to raise large quantities of fish in stagnant ponds and ditches. Another learned how to preserve milk and fruit juices at room temperature and transport them great distances. All have contributed in some way to the mission of increasing the quality, quantity and availability of food in the world.

(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)