Two nutrition advocates whose focus on maternal and child nutrition helped reduce the number of stunted children in the world by 10 million in five years are the winners of the World Food Prize for 2018, announced the sponsor of the $250,000 prize on Monday. Lawrence Haddad and David Nabarro will receive the award on Oct. 18 as part of the World Food Prize Foundation’s weeklong conference on poverty, hunger, and food security.
Haddad, a pioneer in food policy research, is executive director of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), which combines public- and private-sector partners in projects for better nutrition. Nabarro led UN projects that united 54 countries and one state in India to implement policies in South Asia and Africa to fight child malnutrition.
“The 2018 laureates’ work significantly improved nutrition for mothers and children in the critical first 1,000 days of life — the period from pregnancy to a child’s second birthday. Their relentless leadership and advocacy has also inspired efforts by countless others that have collectively reduced the world’s number of stunted children by 10 million between 2012 and 2017,” said the Food Prize Foundation.
The World Food Prize was created by Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug, known as the father of the Green Revolution, to recognize leaders who, as the sponsoring foundation says, have “enhanced human development and confronted hunger by improving the quality, quantity, or availability of food in the world.” The prize is often described as the Nobel of agriculture. World Food Prize president Ken Quinn, in a nod to the ongoing World Cup soccer tournament, described the prize as the World Cup of agriculture award, with the trophy going to “the person who has scored the most goals in terms of reducing hunger and malnutrition around the world.”
Throughout their careers, Haddad and Nabarro have exercised “extraordinary intellectual and policy leadership in bringing maternal and child nutrition to the forefront of the global food security agenda and thereby significantly reducing childhood stunting,” said Quinn during a ceremony at USDA headquarters.
“Until now, nutrition has been everyone’s business, but nobody’s responsibility,” said Nabarro on Twitter. “Let’s banish the latter by changing the way we understand our role in advancing nutrition — after all, we are all accountable for it. Together we can end hunger!” Nabarro spearheaded the Scaling Up Nutrition movement from 2010 to 2014 and continues to serve on its advisory Lead Group.
Haddad, who says he has been “somewhat freakishly” interested in nutrition and agricultural economics since age 18, expressed in a GAIN blog his delight and “sheer surprise” at winning the Food Prize for his role as a researcher, policy influencer, organizational leader, and communicator of issues to a broader audience. “In other words,” he wrote, “to help convince powerful decision makers that good nutrition is fundamental.”
From 2014 to 2016, Haddad was co-chair of the Global Nutrition Report, an annual review “of the world’s progress on nutrition that encouraged greater transparency and accountability among more than 100 stakeholders who had pledged $23 billion to the fight against malnutrition,” said the Food Prize Foundation.
For more about the 2018 laureates on the WFP homepage, click here.