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World Food Prize Laureate winner to give 2025 John Innes Foundation Lecture

Member News
The views expressed in this Member News article are the author's own and do not necessarily represent those of Agri-TechE.

Dr Cary Fowler, former US Special Envoy for Global Food Security and 2024 World Food Prize winner will be delivering this year’s John Innes Foundation Lecture, ‘Trends – Trouble – Tenacity: The food security picture for 2050’. It will be held at the John Innes Conference Centre at Norwich Research Park starting from 1.30-2.30pm on Friday 23 May.

The preponderance of evidence indicates that we will fall far short of producing enough to meet global food demand and need by 2050. Climate, soil degradation and loss, water shortages, conflict, trade restrictions and underinvestment in agricultural research are combining to swell the numbers of food insecure and create an ugly world we should not bequeath to future generations.

No magic solutions exist but amongst the many good and positive things that could be done, a few are strategic and essential. Dr Fowler will examine the challenges and point to a few of the most important responses we could be making.

At the State Department Dr Fowler launched the ‘Vision for Adapted Crops and Soils’ initiative and organised 150 Nobel and World Food Prize Laureates to raise the alarm about the growing challenges to feeding the world’s people by 2050.

Previously, Dr Fowler led the Global Crop Diversity Trust and is best known for being the ‘father’ of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

You are welcome to attend in person so please register here.

(Please note that you do not need to register to attend in person if you are already planning to attend the whole of Jonathan Jones’ ‘Looking Back to Look Forward’ event at the same venue.)

You can also watch a livestream of the lecture here.

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