Feeding the World: The View from Iowa
Friday, October 17, 2003
Speaker: Governor Tom Vilsack
Introduction by
AMBASSADOR KENNETH M. QUINN
President, The World Food Prize Foundation
Now to introduce our morning keynote speaker. It’s my privilege and honor to introduce to you a great friend of the World Food Prize, someone who is known in Iowa for his concern and advocacy and leadership in children’s healthcare coverage, excellence in education, and also as a national leader in life sciences and value-added agriculture. Boosted Iowa’s economy $256 million in value-added agricultural investment in doubling the number of ethanol plants and supporting biotech research.
Governor Vilsack is now the chair of the Democratic Governors’ Association, a member of the National Governors’ Association Executive Committee, and a founding member of the Governors’ Biotechnology Partnership. And three years ago I had my first symposium – he and the governor of North Dakota where here chairing a panel and addressing issues of safety of GMO crops and bringing that issue to the attention of everyone who was here for the symposium.
But a couple of other things that maybe you don’t know about Governor Vilsack: One is that he and our laureate share in common the fact that they attended school – he went to law school; she went to undergraduate school in Albany, New York. And most importantly to us, he has been a great, great friend to the World Food Prize. I mentioned before our major sponsors, but our biggest sponsors, the Ruan family and the State of Iowa.
And I want to say in front of everybody, Governor, to you, to the legislative leaders who are here today with us: Thank you so much. All this wouldn’t be possible without what you have done to provide us the support and the wherewithal to make this an event that is adding to Iowa’s economic ability and economic progress.
And he is also the person who was the inspiration for having Dr. Norman Borlaug Day. And with the legislature they worked together and created only the second time ever in the history of our state a day of recognition for Dr. Borlaug.
So it’s a great honor to introduce our governor, Governor Tom Vilsack.
THOMAS J. VILSACK
Governor, State of Iowa
Thank you very much, thank you, thank you, thank you very much. Ambassador, thank you very much, and to the honored guests, including Catherine, welcome to Iowa. Dr. Borlaug, it is welcome home to you – we’re happy to have you back as a native Iowan. And to John Ruan and to the Ruan family, thank you so much for the sacrifices that your family has made to allow the state of Iowa to be the host to this wonderful opportunity to have a discussion and conversation about something so vital as food.
And, Ambassador Quinn, let me thank you for you and the work of your staff in making this event really the highlight of the fall in the entire state of Iowa. This is going to be a wonderful symposium, and we look forward to welcoming all of you to our beautiful state capitol to an event and function that I suspect none of you will ever forget. We’re looking forward to it.
My job today is to welcome you and to give you a sense about the state of Iowa as it relates to food. And I thought with your permission I would start off with just two short, personal stories. Food, as you can tell, is very important to me. But it’s more important than you might even imagine.
I’m adopted. I was taken out of an orphanage, and my parents used to tell the story to me, when I got a little bit older, about the decision that they made to adopt me. It’s something like this. They decided they wanted a healthy child, and they figured that the best way to determine a healthy child was to find the chunkiest kid in the orphanage. As they described this to me and as I got older, it made it seem like they were going to the grocery store to pick the Thanksgiving turkey, but... So my connection to my family was a result of my healthy appetite.
Fast forward about 19 years. I’m in college in upstate New York. I met a young lady from Iowa. I had never heard of the state, didn’t know much about it. She invited me to her home town for a visit during the summer. And my first experience with Iowa was a potluck supper. It was a monthly event that took place in her community where friends of her family got together along a river, and they brought all of the wonderful food that was prepared. And for a college-aged guy
going into a room that was filled with homemade food of all kinds and varieties, particularly desserts, I really felt that this was a phenomenal place. But it was really more about the way in which the food was prepared and the pride that people had in the food that they prepared and the sense of community that I experienced on that night, that convinced me that this was a very special place.
And over the course of the last 25 years, what I have learned about my state is that food is central, not just to its economy but to its value system. Those who work the land feel a very specific responsibility to the land, to their families, to their community, and I believe to the world. They recognize that they have an enormous responsibility and duty to create the food supply that will help people remain healthy and provide for stability in our country and others.
They understand that it is essential to security – another value that is important to Iowans – that sufficient food be produced in our country, that we not just have enough for our needs but that we can use what we don’t need for others. And they also recognize, as they harvest the crop this fall and every fall, that as they supply this nutritious food, they create a sense of opportunity. For any individual to reach their fullest potential, they obviously must have adequate and abundant food.
So this state is committed to food, the raising of crops. There is a significant economic pressure on those who tend the land. It’s difficult for them to make a living, and so there are people such as the folks that we honor today who are constantly looking for opportunities and ways in which food can be used to make a better world.
You happen to be in a state today where the following is being done with the crops that are raised by our farmers: In addition to nutritious food, we are making clothes from corn. There’s a place not too far from here that takes the fiber of corn and creates tee-shirts made from corn.
In addition to making clothes, not too far from here there is a series of ethanol-production facilities that are producing a cleaner-burning fuel that’s not as harmful to the environment, that creates greater efficiency in the use of our automobiles and for our country provides the hope of economic and energy independence.
Not too far from this hotel there is a place in Iowa where cornstalks are being burned to produce electricity.
Just up the road from here at Iowa State University there are scientists who are working feverishly, looking at various aspects of the genetic makeup of crops to try to determine how we can convert what we grow to food that can be used for greater nutrition and food that can be converted into cures for illnesses and diseases. Just last year or so, a crop was raised in our state, a material of which was sent to France and processed and then is now in England and is being used as a treatment for cystic fibrosis.
In northwest Iowa there are individuals who are growing crops with proteins that can be extracted, proteins that are grown, protein from mother’s milk that can be used as a cure for dehydration, caused from diarrhea, which, as all of you know is a leading cause of death of children in underdeveloped countries.
In essence what’s happening in Iowa is the creation of the 21st century American economy and not solely dependent upon manufacturing, not solely dependent upon service, but a bioeconomy where every aspect of the economy is linked in some way to what we grow and what we raise.
It is a hopeful economy for our state and for those who tend the land in our state. The work that is celebrated in the World Food Prize each and every year is, at its core, about hope. This is a very insecure world that we live in today. In our country there are concerns, as there are in many other countries, about terror. Our country’s response to terror has been from a public perception primarily a military response.
Let me suggest to you today that there may be an even more powerful weapon against terror. And that’s the center of what you discuss here – food. You see, I believe that in order for us to be a safer world, we have to take a look at the root causes of terror. It is poverty, it is illness, it is disease and sickness. And food has the ability and creates the opportunity to overcome and to defeat the causes of terror.
I’ve asked Iowans, as I’ve traveled across our great state, to consider, to think about a world in which what we grow and what we raise is used for more nutritious food, that we use the power of science and we continue the work of folks like Dr. Borlaug and others to figure out how food can become even more nutritious.
I was in Africa several years ago with Ambassador Andrew Young. We traveled to Nigeria. It is a country with vast richness but extraordinary poverty. We met with farmers from Nigeria, farmers who were very skeptical about new approaches to agriculture.
There was one farmer in particular who had taken the risk and the chance of using this new science to create a crop that could feed his village. He explained in very simple terms the power of what he was doing. He knew that if he could raise sufficient food for his village that the children of his village would grow strong and healthy, that strong and healthy children in turn would be able to tend the land, and some would probably leave the village and go to other places where they would help harvest the vast richness of this country and in turn use those riches to make for a more peaceful Nigeria. This farmer understood the power of food.
We have the opportunity in the world today to create a situation where our power to raise crops, our mindpower to convert those crops into more nutritious food, can be expanded worldwide. If we in fact can create not only a food supply but in states and countries where there is very little in terms of healthcare systems, also a rudimentary healthcare system in the food that we consume, then we can provide for healthier and more stable children.
I think we have the capacity to do that. I think work is being done in my state, in my country and in the world today in the countries that are represented here, to create that kind of food.
If we can take what we grow and what we raise and create that cleaner-burning fuel that allows us not to be so dependent upon foreign oil in this country, maybe this country could become an even stronger force for advocating for peace in a very, very troubled world and a very troubled section of the world in the Middle East.
And if we can take what we grow and what we raise and connect it to the science and indeed create cures for illnesses and diseases and take those cures to countries and continents ravaged by illness and disease, we can address the root causes of terror and we can create a stronger and more secure world.
What is celebrated here today and what your work will focus on is all about a much more hopeful world. It is very consistent with the values of the people of our great state. You all understand the responsibility that you have as extraordinarily creative people, to try to create this world. You understand fully and completely, better than most, the power of food in terms of providing for a more secure world. And your work at every level is about creating greater and better opportunity.
So it’s fitting that this celebration, that this symposium, this discussion, this dialog take place here in the Heartland of America in the great State of Iowa. And it’s fitting that the governor of that great state be given the opportunity – and I consider it a distinct honor – to welcome each and every one of our visitors, those who have been fortunate enough to have been recognized as laureates in the past and those whose work, those whose dedication, those whose service is leading to a better and more hopeful world.
So, welcome, welcome to a state that not only raises food but understands it, embraces it and looks forward to using it for a better and more peaceful world.