This is the VOA SpecialEnglish AGRICULTURE REPORT.
The World Food Prize is being presented this week in the Americanstate of Iowa. Each year, the World Food Prize honors people whohave improved the quality of world food supplies. The winner thisyear is Per (PARE) Pinstrup-Andersen of Denmark.
The award ceremony will include a special celebration to honorthe fifteenth anniversary of the World Food Prize. Officials plan tohonor the work of Norman Borlaug (BAWR lawg).
Mister Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in Nineteen-Seventy fordeveloping new kinds of wheat. He later had the idea for a WorldFood Prize. He wanted to make it equal to a Nobel Prize for Food andAgriculture.
Many people say Norman Borlaug is responsible for startingimprovements in the world food supply in the Nineteen-Sixties. Theythank him for saving the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
Norman Borlaug was born in Nineteen-Fourteen in Cresco, Iowa, asmall farming community. He later attended the University ofMinnesota. He completed studying forestry there inNineteen-Thirty-Seven.
Mister Borlaug worked briefly with the United States ForestService before returning to the University of Minnesota to continuehis studies. He worked for the DuPont Company before joining thearmed forces during World War Two.
In Nineteen-Forty-Four, the Rockefeller Foundation sent MisterBorlaug to Mexico to work as an agricultural scientist. The groupasked him to develop wheat plants that would produce large amountsof grain in warm climates. For the next sixteen years, he studiedproblems that were limiting wheat production in Mexico. He alsohelped to train many young scientists.
In Mexico, Mister Borlaug developed several kinds of wheat plantsthat resisted disease. His plants were able to grow in manydifferent climate conditions. They also were extremely productive.
These plants and improved farming methods changed Mexicanagriculture. In the Nineteen-Sixties, India, Pakistan and othercountries began to grow the wheat developed by Mister Borlaug. Thesecrops changed some nations from grain importers to grain exporters.They reduced the risk of starvation in many places. Today, theimprovements to world agriculture from such crops are known as theGreen Revolution.
This VOA Special English AGRICULTURE REPORT was written by GeorgeGrow.