Dive Brief:
- Sanjaya Rajaram is the recipient of the 2014 World Food Prize, which honors those who work to expand the quantity and availability of food to the world's poor.
- Rajaram, who runs a research lab in Mexico, is a wheat scientist best-known for his lifelong association with the late Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Prize winner known as the father of "Green Revolution" -- the decades-long research and development effort to boost crop yields and reduce global hunger.
- Rajaram's work on wheat breeding at International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center is credited with boosting yields by more than 200 million tons.
Dive Insight:
Congratulations to Rajaram. We can't think of anyone who deserves the prize more. Nor can we think of anyone who has done as much to continue the work of Borlaug to use agricultural science to end hunger.
But it's become impossible to talk about Borlaug and Rajaram without acknowledging that the work of the Green Revolution is now seen as controversial. The revolution worked. Of that there is no doubt. Crop yields have skyrocketed in recent decades, and Borlaug is known to history as "the man who saved a billion lives."
But Borlaug and Rajaram did what they did largely through the genetic manipulation of organisms (GMO). And today GMO foods are the focus of protests and political debate.
And thus the news of Rajaram's victory reminds us that one of the most important challenges facing the food industry in the era of GMO protests is to "somehow manage to bridge the chasm between those who wish to feed healthier food to Americans and those who wish simply to feed the starving."