The Borlaug Blog

Keegan Kautzky

At the very first World Food Prize Youth Institute, there were just 12 students…and three Nobel Peace Prize Laureates!

Norman Borlaug, Jimmy Carter and Muhammad Yunus spent the day listening to the students’ ideas, discussing their solutions, and offering them advice on how to tackle the world’s toughest challenges.

Three of the greatest heroes in the history of ending hunger, poverty and human disease on our planet - and on that special day in Des Moines, these Nobel Laureates were also mentors, teachers, colleagues, collaborators and friends with a dozen high school students who wanted to make a difference in the world.

Twenty years later, over 12,000 passionate young leaders at hundreds of high schools across the United States will have that same life-changing experience. 

As independent projects, class assignments and team activities, they will research the most pressing global challenges facing our food system – exploring everything from water scarcity and food waste to gender inequality and plant diseases.

They will learn about other countries and cultures, analyze how families are affected around the world and examine the programs, policies and improved technologies that exist to solve these problems today. Based on all that they’ve learned, they will offer their personal recommendations on what needs to be done, how it will be funded and who should be involved.

At the age of 16 or 17, these students will help solve some of the greatest threats we face in the world today. And the global perspective, critical thinking skills and analytic abilities they will develop as they research, write and work to resolve these real-world problems will help prepare them for college and career success, and the critical work that awaits them over the next sixty years of their lives. 

Out of all of these incredible, creative students across the country, a few thousand of the most passionate and promising young leaders will travel with their teachers and mentors to 25 universities and colleges across the country to participate in a state or regional institute.  

Some institutes are one or two days on campus, while others are two- to four-week intensive camps filled with hands-on labs, fieldtrips, immersions and leadership development and skill-building events. 

At the heart of this experience is something Dr. Borlaug and John Ruan, the founders of the World Food Prize Youth Institute, believed in passionately – that every student must have a voice and a seat at the table.

Every student has the opportunity to present their research and recommendations, and discuss their ideas with their peers, as well as experts and leaders in these critical fields. Through these roundtable discussions, it is the students who lead the conversation, growing in their confidence and understanding and learning critical life skills in this exchange of ideas.

Over 2,000 of the of the top professors and university leaders, business and industry executives, issue experts and community leaders across the country volunteer to interact with the students, listen to their ideas, provide them feedback and advice and serve as mentors and role models for these promising young leaders.

And the incredible legacy that Borlaug, Carter and Yunus created in 1998 continues today, with dozens of Nobel and World Food Prize Laureates offering their precious personal time to read student papers, listen to their ideas, offer advice and mentor, educate and inspire these future innovators and entrepreneurs, scientists, senators and CEOs.

Students at the New York Youth Institute at Cornell University have the opportunity to work with Catherine Bertini and Per Pinstrup-Andersen – two of the most influential policymakers in the world. At Purdue University, Indiana students learn from Gebisa Ejeta and Phil Nelson – two of the greatest plant and food scientists alive today.

All across the country, students have the opportunity to interact with humanitarians and hunger fighters like Jo Luck, Hans Herren, David Beckmann and Chuck Rice - real heroes whose work touches the soil and the hearts of all mankind.

This was Norman Borlaug and John Ruan’s dream - that every student in every high school in America would have the opportunity to explore how their passions connect to college and career pathways, and be inspired to see how they can use their life to change the world.

Twenty years ago, the World Food Prize youth programs changed the lives of 12 students in one state.

Today, we are able to educate and empower 12,000 students in 25 states.

In a few years, we will reach 12 million students and provide life-changing opportunities in every state in America, and around the world.

This is the noble (and Nobel) legacy that we are fulfilling at The World Food Prize!