Bram Govaerts Speaker For World Food Prize Lecture

Bram Govaerts was the guest speaker at George Daily Auditorium in honor of the World Food Prize.

Oskaloosa, Iowa – The staff and students, as well as members of the community, took the opportunity to listen and learn from Bram Govaerts. Govaerts is the global Director of Innovative Business Strategies for the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center.

Govaerts is the 2014 Norman Borlaug Award winner for Field Research and Application, endowed by the Rockefeller Foundation and awarded by the World Food Prize.

The World Food Prize is the equivalent to the Nobel Peace Prize. The international award recognizes individuals whose achievements have advanced human development by increasing the quality, quantity, or availability of food in the world.

Govaerts started by recognizing the farmers and farm families for what they do to help feed the world.

He said that of the seven billion people in the world, 1.4 billion of those work in agriculture.

Govaerts talked about the long history in fighting rust in the wheat crop, and the work that went into containing the fungal disease. The disease, if left unchecked, would have threatened more crops and threatened the world’s food supply.

Norman Borlaug was one of the leading researchers into finding and developing a wheat hybrid that was resistant to disease, while also providing an ample harvest. Borlaug worked to establish and lead the Global Rust Initiative.

The Borlaug Global Rust Initiative continues today “has the overarching objective of systematically reducing the world’s vulnerability to stem, yellow, and leaf rusts.”

The Borlaug Global Rust Initiative continues with wheat enhancements and development to withstand future global threats to wheat.

Today, research into food security, such as disease-resistant plants, is part of the world government’s plan to help diminish conflicts around the world.

As the world’s population continues to grow, the threats to food security become more important to diminishing conflict over food availability.

Govaerts said that today, “there’s enough food that is produced. The question then becomes about how well it is distributed.”

“Today, the resiliency of the distribution of food is something that must be analyzed further,” Govaerts said.

“So today, there are over 800 million people that do not have enough to eat, and go hungry. At the same time, we have 500 million people that are actually having a problem with overweight or obese,” added Govaerts. “It’s two extremes.”

When it comes to vaccination for disease, it was discovered that micronutrition was important for those medicines to work and be effective.

In closing, Govaerts gave those in attendance a bit of advice. “You can choose anything you want for your future. When you choose, you choose something you like, you’re good at and do it for the greater good.”

“There’s a huge potential in this room,” Govaerts said in closing while encouraging cooperation with nutrition. “In the end, we all just want to be happy.”

Posted by on Oct 18 2019. Filed under Local News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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