PREVIEW-World Food Prize eyes gains, setbacks in hunger

This year's World Food Prize will go to Gebisa Ejeta, a Purdue University scientist who developed drought- and weed-tolerant crops and worked to get the seed into the hands of small farmers in his native Africa. [ID:nN11502970]

It will take more than a jump in yields to achieve food security, said past laureates interviewed by Reuters, noting investment needed in education, health and infrastructure.

Plans for how best to spend money pledged to agricultural development continue to be deliberated in the United States and around the world. Some worry that dithering could stall momentum either for donors or within developing countries.

"We've got so many plans developed for almost every country in the world. We now need to pick them up and put them into action," said Per Pinstrup-Andersen, an economist at Cornell University and a Food Prize laureate.

For more from that interview, please see: link.reuters.com/vac63f

In Africa, it took a long time to lay the foundation to address agriculture's role in hunger, said Monty Jones, head of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa, who won the World Food Prize in 2004 for his work on rice.

But nations are beginning to take ownership of the issue and move forward on plans, Jones said.

"We've done this in good faith. We've taken our time. We've got a good plan. We are now implementing that plan," he said.

"I am very confident in the short term to the medium term, we'll begin to see the impacts of this very good plan on work on the ground," Jones said.

Where African countries have invested in fertilizer and seed for farmers -- like Malawi -- yields have shot up, said Pedro Sanchez of Columbia University's Earth Institute, a World Food Prize laureate who works extensively in Africa on hunger.

"The African Green Revolution is possible, and it's a way that hunger can eventually be eliminated on that continent," Sanchez said. Previous World Food Prize winners [ID:nN13143823] (Editing by Jim Marshall)