World Food Prize Laureate to discuss challenges of global food demands

February 18, 2011

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — According to the United Nations, nearly 1 billion of the world’s 6.5 billion people went hungry last year.

With estimates that the world’s population will reach 9 billion by 2050, the quest to feed our growing populace will test our collective willpower in a way humans have never faced, said Gebisa Ejeta, a distinguished professor of plant breeding and genetics and international agriculture at Purdue University in Indiana.

Born and raised in a small, rural community in west-central Ethiopia, Ejeta has a unique perspective on the looming food deficit — one that has informed his nearly 40 years of experience in the world of food science and garnered him the 2009 World Food Prize.

Ejeta will share that perspective in a Feb. 22 presentation titled “The New Global Food Security Agenda: It Will Test Our Will!” on the University of Florida campus. As part of the York Distinguished Lecturer series, the presentation is free and open to the public.

In the near future, Ejeta said, the world will be faced with an exponentially expanding population at the same time climate change will make it more difficult to grow some crops. There will be fewer traditional agricultural tools like fertilizers and other chemicals because they will be seen as too damaging to the environment.

“We will have to have the collective willpower to not only put a focus on the science that can help us solve these problems, but also the political will to contribute the necessary resources,” Ejeta said.

Ejeta has served on numerous science and program review panels, technical committees and advisory boards of major research and development organizations. These include the international agricultural research centers, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and a number of national and regional organizations in Africa.

He was recently designated special adviser to USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah. Besides the 2009 World Food Prize, Ejeta also received a national medal of honor from the president of Ethiopia.

The lecture will be held in the Presidents Room of Emerson Alumni Hall at 2 p.m. Parking is available in the O’Connell Center lot. The York Distinguished Lecturer Series is made possible through a gift to UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences from E.T. and Vam York.

For more information: http://yorklecture.ifas.ufl.edu.