(Radio Iowa) – World Food Prize events are underway in Des Moines as several thousand government officials, researchers and food producers from around the globe gather for panel discussions and recognition of this year’s World Food Prize winner. Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack is C-E-O of the World Food Prize Foundation. “We are welcoming the world to Iowa and we are lifting up issues involving food, agriculture, and the serious challenge we face in terms of food insecurity here at home and around the world,” Vilsack said. Vilsack says the annual event is meant to showcase innovation and research that allows farmers to be more productive.

“An opportunity to have some really substantive conversation about food and food security,” Vilsack said. Tomorrow’s (Tuesday’s) schedule includes a discussion of hunger hotspots and a panel of people from the American Soybean Association. Vilsack says there’s a chance tariffs will be discussed. “But I think the focus is going to be, as it needs to be, on innovation and on science and on the extraordinary work that’s being done by researchers,” Vilsack said. “As Dr. Borlaug often said tell the farmer, give it to the farmer, give the tools the farmer and the farmer will respond by being extraordinarily productive. You know, we want to make sure that we’re true to that legacy.”

Cresco, Iowa, native Norman Borlaug won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize for his work improving wheat yields. He founded the World Food Prize in 1986 to recognize breakthroughs in improving the quality or quantity of food. The concluding event this week will honor this year’s World Food Prize laureate. “Dr. (Mariangela) Hungria has done extraordinary research that has led to ways in which soybeans can basically create this sort of self-fertilizing if you will so that you don’t have to have as much synthetic fertilizer, which is good for the environment,” Vilsack said, “and certainly good for the bottom line for farmers.”

A researcher was awarded the 1993 Nobel Price in physics and medicine for genetic research is scheduled to speak tomorrow (Tuesday). Sir Richard Roberts — knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 2008 — is currently the chief science officer at New England Biolabs.