Sixth-generation Dutch seedsman wins $250,000 World Food Prize
Simon N. Groot of the Netherlands was announced as the 2019 World Food Prize Laureate for his transformative role in empowering millions of smallholder farmers in more than 60 countries to earn greater incomes through enhanced vegetable production, benefiting hundreds of millions of consumers with greater access to nutritious vegetables for healthy diets.
Simon N. Groot of the Netherlands was announced as the 2019 World Food Prize Laureate for his transformative role in empowering millions of smallholder farmers in more than 60 countries to earn greater incomes through enhanced vegetable production, benefiting hundreds of millions of consumers with greater access to nutritious vegetables for healthy diets.
“Like Dr. Norman Borlaug before him, Simon N. Groot has dedicated his life to improving the livelihoods of millions around the world,” said Ambassador Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation. “With his partner in the Philippines, he began developing vegetable varieties with enhanced disease resistance and significantly higher yields. As the use of his seeds spread throughout the Philippines and to Thailand, Indonesia, and across Southeast Asia, farmers’ daily lives were uplifted and consumers benefited from greater access to nutritious vegetables.”
Awarded by the World Food Prize Foundation, this $250,000 prize honors Groot’s achievements as the founder and leader of East-West Seed. His initiative over the past four decades has developed a dynamic, smallholder-centric tropical vegetable seed industry, starting in Southeast Asia and spreading through Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Today, East-West Seed serves over 20 million smallholder farmers in more than 60 tropical countries.
“The awarding of the World Food Prize to a vegetable seedsman is reason for excitement and gratitude,” said Groot. “But the ultimate recognition is for the millions of smallholder farmers that stepped up farming from a way of living to building a business.”
When Groot started East-West Seed, commercial vegetable breeding was all but unknown in the tropics. Smallholder farmers struggled to grow a good crop with low-quality, poorly adapted seed that they often saved from season to season. Low-quality seed resulted in low yields, which translated into poverty and malnutrition for farmers and their families. Groot saw a way to break the vicious cycle of poverty and help farmers achieve prosperity through diversification into high value vegetable crops.
Groot will receive the World Food Prize at a ceremony that will be held in Des Moines, Iowa, on the Oct. 17, 2019.