World Food Prize goes to Denmark native

The fifteenth annual World Food prize will go to a native of Denmark. Per Pinstrup-Andersen is head of the International Food Policy Research Institute, and will come to Des Moines to accept the award in October. The prize was announced today at Grandview College in Des Moines, which was founded by Danish immigrants more than a century ago. Lowell Kramme, the Danish Consul for Iowa, read a note of congratulations from the Danish ambassador.Kramme noted that the prize was conceived by 1970 Nobel Prize Winner and Iowa native Dr Norman Borlaug. The World Food Prize Symposium will be held in Des Moines in October, and the Laureate Award will be presented to this year’s honoree. The honorary chairman of the Symposium is former Iowa Governor Robert Ray, who hailed businessman and philanthropist, John Ruan, who’s been the award’s sponsor since 1990. He says Ruan has given 30-million in support for the prize. While some of the nineteen previous award winners have developed animal vaccines, new strains of food-grains, or pest-management programs, this year’s winner works with governments of developing nations to create food-subsidy programs to get the food they have to people who need it.