2014 Borlaug Field Award Ceremony
Bram Govaerts
Bram Govaerts, Associate Director of the Global Conservation Agricultural Program at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT), received the 2014 Norman Borlaug Field Award for Field Research and Application, Endowned by the Rockefeller Foundation. The announcement of his selection was made by World Food Prize President Ambassador Kenneth Quinn at the USAID Frontiers in Development Forum on September 18 in Washington, D.C.
In developing his vision to help poor farmers increase food production from their existing farmland, Govaerts was inspired by the great agricultural scientist and World Food Prize Founder Norman Borlaug’s credo: “Take It to the Farmer.” To that end, Govaerts was instrumental in framing the Mexican government’s major initiative known as the Sustainable Modernization of Traditional Agriculture (MasAgro), and, in June 2014, he assumed leadership of the entire program, with responsibility for coordinating the evolution of related projects in Latin America.