After Dr. Borlaug was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize...
In 1970, he realized there should be a prestigious, international award given each year to honor the work of great agricultural scientists working to end hunger and improve the food supply.
In 1986, he founded The World Food Prize, an annual $250,000 award that he hoped would both highlight and inspire breakthrough achievements in improving the quality, quantity and availability of food in the world, and which is now often referred to as the “Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture.”
Dr. Borlaug imbued this foundation with his philosophy that confronting hunger and poverty can bring people together across even the widest political, religious, ethic, or diplomatic divides.
Over the past 30 years, The World Food Prize has been awarded to laureates from Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Cape Verde, China, Cuba, Denmark, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Israel, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Switzerland, Uganda, United Kingdom, the United Nations and the United States. They have been recognized for a wide array of work, in areas including soil and land; plant and animal science; food science and technology; nutrition; rural development; marketing; food processing and packaging; water and the environment; natural resource conservation; physical infrastructure; transportation and distribution; special or extraordinary feeding programs; social organization and poverty elimination; economics and finance; policy analysis; and public advocacy.
Dr. Borlaug also helped build the World Food Prize "Borlaug Dialogue" international symposium, which brings together the world's top minds each year to address cutting-edge issues in hunger and food security. He also developed the World Food Prize youth programs, which engage high school and college students in the fight to end hunger and introduces them to potential academic and career paths in agriculture and related fields.
Dr. Borlaug's statue in the U.S. Capitol is a great inspiration to scientists, leaders, and the next generation of hunger fighters around the world as we confront what World Food Prize President Amb. Kenneth M. Quinn calls “the single greatest challenge in human history: whether we can sustainably feed the 9 billion people who will be on our planet in the year 2050.”