ibironkeeniola 
The World Food Prize Foundation has announced that it is now accepting nominations of persons or individuals for the 2020 edition of its prestigious World Food Prize Award.
Nominations are now being accepted for the $250, 000 prize via an online nomination form due by May 1, 2020, the foundation announced on its website.
The annual prize is awarded for a “specific, exceptionally significant individual achievement that advances human development with a demonstrable increase in the quantity, quality, availability of, or access to food through creative interventions at any point within the full scope of the food system.”
The prize, according to the foundation, is open to individuals in the fields of, among others: soil and land, plant and animal science, food science and technology, nutrition, and rural development.
Other fields include marketing, food processing, packaging and storage, water and the environment, natural resource conservation, physical infrastructure and transportation, and distribution.
Also included are individuals involved in special or extraordinary feeding programs, social organization and poverty elimination, economics and finance, policy analysis and implementation, and public advocacy.
The Netherlands’ vegetable breeder, Simon Groot, emerged last year’s winner of the prize and was announced the 2019 World Food Prize Laureate in an award ceremony in Iowa, U.S., in October.
Groot received the award for his transformative role in empowering millions of smallholder vegetable farmers in more than 60 countries.
His efforts in developing vegetable varieties with enhanced disease resistance helped farmers across Southeast Asia to gain significantly higher yields and incomes.
Sierra Leone’s Minty Jones is the first African Laureate of the prize, an honour he received in 2004 alongside China’s Yuan Longping as co-laureate.
Jones was awarded the prize for the discovery of the genetic process to create the New Rice for Africa (NERICA), which gives higher yields, shorter growth cycles and more protein content than its Asian and African parents.
SOURCE: AGRONIGERIA