by Jake Olzen
The world’s leading agricultural and food policy experts are headed to Des Moines, Iowa, this week to celebrate the World Food Prize. The annual event heralds the achievements of individuals who have advanced human development by improving the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world. But not everyone finds such achievements reason to celebrate.
Occupy the World Food Prize — an ad hoc coalition of community groups and activists — has organized a week of educational events, panel discussions and direct action to protest the corporate control of local and global food systems. The goals of Occupy the World Food Prize‘s campaign are twofold: to use the World Food Prize event as an opportunity to redirect the public discourse around food and farming systems and to shift the focus of the prize away from agribusiness to locally-based, sustainable agriculture.(Image: Tumblr)
“The World Food Prize is for us in Iowa what Wall Street is for the Occupy movement in New York City. The very same corporate/financial elites that run Wall Street are the same corporate/financial elites that own the World Food Prize and control the world food supply,” said Frank Cordaro, a member of the Occupy World Food Prize working group.
Activists have planned to vigil and “soapbox” outside of the World Food Prize three-day symposium to draw public attention to the corporate nature of the organization. Direct action and civil disobedience are planned for two separate occasions during the symposium. The first, on Wednesday, October 16, Occupy the World Food Prize will protest the Rockefeller Foundation’s endowment of the inaugural Norman Borlaug Award for Field Research and Application at the World Food Prize Hall of Laureates building.
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