Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, founder and chairperson of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), the largest NGO in the world, has been awarded the World Food Prize 2015. Bangladesh can duly take pride in the receipt of the prestigious prize. Fazle Hasan Abed has been honoured as 'he pioneered a new approach to development that has effectively and sustainably addressed the interconnectedness between hunger and poverty. In this regard, Sir Fazle has broken new ground by melding scalable development models, scientific innovation, and local participation to confront the complex causes of poverty, hunger, and powerlessness among the poor'.
While NGOs (non-governmental organisation) are generally known as microfinance institutions, some innovative initiatives to address the issue of food shortage in rural areas seem to have drawn attention of the world. The BRAC seed and agricultural activities began in 1972 as homestead gardening to address nationwide nutritional deficiencies and support the income of targeted beneficiaries. Later, the seed enterprise was formed as a response to low quality seeds in the market. The BRAC is now the largest private sector seed producer in Bangladesh producing 15,114 metric tonnes in 2014-15 fiscal year. More importantly, it introduced hybrid maize in the country in 1994, and is only producer till today and pioneered national hybrid rice seed production in 2001. At the moment, a large share of seed market has been captured by the BRAC: hybrid maize (29 per cent), hybrid rice (23 per cent), potato seed (23 per cent) and vegetable seed (12 per cent). About 1.5 million farmers have purchased seeds from the BRAC so far this year and 7,200 contract farmers were trained on production of various crops. Thus by any stretch of imagination, the World Food Prize this year has rightly been rewarded.
The genesis of the World Food Prize is very interesting and young generations should have an idea about its origin. The prize was founded by Norman E. Borlaug, a plant pathologist by profession. He literally helped the world come out of the shadow of Malthusian Doomsday. There was a time when the spectre of famine frequently haunted the world and millions of poor people lost their lives. At that time, population used to increase at a geometric progression and food supply at arithmetic progression to cause an imbalance between production and consumption - also called Malthusian misalignment. Noman Borlaug dedicated his life in finding a solution to food shortage. Born of Norwegian descent, Dr. Borlaug was raised in Cresco, a small farming community in northeast Iowa, USA. He learned his work ethic on a small mixed crop and livestock family farm and obtained initial education in a one-room rural school house. In 1970, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for a lifetime of work to feed a hungry world. 'Although a scientist with outstanding contributions, perhaps Dr. Borlaug's greatest achievement has been his unending struggle to integrate the various streams of agricultural research into viable technologies and to convince political leaders to bring these advances to fruition.'
In 1944, Dr. Borlaug participated in the Rockefeller Foundation's pioneering technical assistance programme in Mexico where he was a research scientist in charge of wheat improvement. For the next 16 years, he worked to solve a series of wheat production problems that were limiting wheat cultivation in Mexico and to help train a whole generation of young Mexican scientists. The assignment in Mexico possibly turned a new leaf in his life. 'These new wheat varieties and improved crop management practices transformed agricultural production in Mexico during 1940s and 1950s and later in Asia and Latin America, sparking what today is known as the 'Green Revolution.' The work in Mexico not only had a profound impact on Dr. Borlaug's life and philosophy of agriculture research and development, but also on agricultural production, first in Mexico and later in many parts of the world.
While working in Mexico, it was on the research stations and farmers' fields that Dr. Borlaug developed successive generations of wheat varieties with broad and stable disease resistance, broad adaptation to growing conditions across many degrees of latitude, and with exceedingly high-yield potential. Because of his achievements to prevent hunger, famine and misery around the world, it is said that Dr. Borlaug has 'saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived.'
After receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, Dr Borlaug realised there should be a prestigious, international award given each year to honour the work of great agricultural scientists working to end hunger and improve the food supply. The reasons are possibly not far to seek. World peace depends on availability of food. In a regime of acute scarcity of land everywhere, the supply of additional food has to come through scientific innovations. It is unfortunate that those engaged in research and extensions to feed the hungry remain outside the scope of Nobel Prize. Secondly, introduction of a Nobel Prize for Agriculture and Food would also mean a respect to the world's poor who mostly eke out a living from agriculture and food. He lobbied with the Nobel committee with his arguments and justifications but to no avail. Finally, Borlaug decided to go it alone in materialising his dream. In 1986, he founded the World Food Prize, with an annual award of $250,000, that he hoped 'would both highlight and inspire breakthrough achievements in improving the quality, quantity and availability of food in the world. This prize is now often referred to as the 'Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture.'
Over the past 28 years, the World Food Prize has been awarded to laureates from Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, China, Denmark, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Israel, Mexico, Sierra Leone, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States. The recipients have been recognised for a wide array of work in areas including soil and land, plant and animal science, food science and technology, nutrition, rural development, marketing, food processing and packaging, water and environment, natural resource conservation, physical infrastructure, transportation and distribution, special or extraordinary feeding programmes, social organisation and poverty elimination, economics and finance, policy analysis, and public advocacy.
The writer is a Professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University.
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