welcome and introduction to the symposium
Friday, October 16, 2003
Speaker:  Ambassador Kenneth M. Quinn
Taped Message by:  Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General

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AMBASSADOR KENNETH M. QUINN
President, The World Food Prize Foundation

             Good morning, everyone, and welcome. As Judith just told you, it’s United Nations World Food Day, and we are so pleased to have so many people here to help us celebrate this very special day. And we also in Iowa, in addition to this being United Nations World Food Day, it’s also Dr. Norman Borlaug World Food Prize Day. So we’re very pleased to have this double celebration available to us.

            And we have endeavored at the World Food Prize to build around this, to make it a celebration, a dialog on important issues in food and agriculture, hunger and poverty, and also to bring together people from around the world. I’m so pleased that we have approximately four to five times the number of visitors from outside the state and outside the country here participating in this dialog this year.

            I’d like to introduce to you, on UN World Food Day and Norman Borlaug Day, members who are here with me on the podium and in the rostrum. First, Dr. Norman Borlaug, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. Norm, would you just stand up? You know, Norm was the inspiration for the founding of the World Food Prize more than 15 years ago. All of the laureates you see here have been honored because of his initiative and the other founders of the World Food Prize.

            But at the same time the Food Prize was almost lost, and it was rescued by John Ruan Senior, who stepped forward with the endowment and moved it to Iowa, where we all feel it really belongs. And while John Senior can’t be with us today, John Ruan III is here with us representing his family. John, if you could stand up and through you we could thank your father.

            And we also have with us today, representing the United Nations our 2003 laureate, who of course will be honored more fully tonight and will receive her award – Catherine Bertini, the Under Secretary General of the United Nations and the 2003 World Food Prize Laureate.

            I haven’t forgotten the governor. I’ll introduce him more fully in a couple of minutes when he’s going to speak. But I also want to express my appreciation and to recognize a number of groups who have been here to help us and help build a dialog. As I said, we have a celebration but also a dialog. We want this week every year to be a time when people will want to come from around the world to be here, to network, to connect, to discuss, to go over the issues on their agenda about food and hunger and agriculture. And we have been assisted in that this year by several groups, and I want to recognize them today.

            First I want to recognize our major sponsors for the symposium.

            Monsanto Corporation – anyone here from Monsanto, if you could stand up, please, and we could thank you. Will you join with me?

            Pioneer Hybrid International. Stand up, and join with me in thanking Pioneer.

            Ruan Securities, one of the many Ruan companies who are here, very generously support us, and you can thank Tom Mell and... Thank you.

            We also have members from three hunger-fighting coalitions:  The Alliance Against Hunger and Bread for the World, Second Harvest, the Medford Group. And I want to particularly thank Eric Shockman from Mazon, the Jewish response to hunger; to Bob Forney of Second Harvest; and David Beckman of Bread for the World. And if they could stand up and all of the members of their alliance who are here, could stand up and we could welcome you to Iowa and thank you, and we hope you’ll come back next year. So please stand up so we can recognize all of you.

            Our laureate of last year, Pedro Sanchez, I just saw him at the door, so I hope he didn’t go out and stayed in. And Dr. M. S. Swaminathan, the first World Food Prize Laureate, our head of the UN Hunger Task Force. So they brought a UN meeting here to Des Moines – not a usual place to have UN gatherings – but they’ve been here working hard all week on their agenda for implementing the Millennium Development goals.

            In addition, Better, Safer World, a new organization – some of you may have met them earlier today. They are also participating with us in this symposium. And if anyone from Better, Safer World is here, if you’d stand up for one second, we could say an appreciation to you. Peter Blumquist and Carol Miller.

            Finally, the U.S. Grains Council and the Iowa Corn Promotion Board, the Nebraska Corn Promotion Board – I hope it’s okay, Governor, for us to cooperate with Nebraska. And the National Corn Growers have brought the International Biotech Conference here. Craig Floss, the head of the Iowa Corn Promotion group and I have been working very closely together. We synchronized our schedules.

            As a result, Governor, we’ve been able to bring 70-80 representatives of more than 30 countries, all who work in the biotech area. We’ve been interacting with them, and our laureates have been out to visit farms with them and to show these officials from those countries just about American agriculture, sort of from the farm gate through processing and shipping, so they can appreciate that crops here are done safely. And if I could ask all of them, all the visitors from those countries, if you’re here today, if you could stand up and we could welcome you as well.

            UN World Food Day – we tried to think who would be the most appropriate person to start us on this. But the governor from Iowa and the Secretary General from the United Nations. Governor, thank you for coming. Secretary General Kofi Annan wasn’t able to be here today, but he sent a message to us. So with your permission we could show that and his welcome.

KOFI ANNAN
Secretary General, United Nations

            Dear Friends – I add my voice to yours on this World Food Day in congratulating Catherine Bertini in winning this year’s World Food Prize. She fully deserves it. Thanks to her outstanding leadership, the World Food Program is today on the frontlines of the world’s battle against hunger. The staff have made many sacrifices in the line of duty and have helped save millions from the scourge of famine. Let’s congratulate them, too.

            I am also very pleased that you are reviewing the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. At a time when many difficult issues divide the international community, these goals are a shining example of consensus among all nations on what is needed to build a better world.

            Let’s all work together to achieve them and especially to halve world hunger by 2015.

 AMBASSADOR QUINN

            Catherine, when you go back to New York, if you’d thank the Secretary General for us for his kindness. He’s been traveling around the world and endeavoring to bring peace in several places, and it’s so wonderful of him to take the time to send us this message.

            We also will have, as part of our dialog, book launchings during the week. We will be having as part of our focus on the Millennium Development Goals and the role of the United Nations, the Human Development Report 2003, a summary by Dr. Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, the director of the Human Development Office at UNDP. And she will also be signing, later during the day following Jeffrey Sachs’ keynote speech at lunch. And we’ll be having another launching of our book, Perspectives in World Food and Agriculture, edited by John Miranowski and Colin Scanes of Iowa State University.