2010 winners of World Food Prize come from NGOs

The winners of this year's World Food Prize were announced yesterday in Washington. The winners are two people who work in non-governmental organizations. One winner knew the founder of the Prize the late great Dr Norman Bourlag, and established Bread for the World. The other winner helped to build the organization Heifer International.

From the Des Moines Register, writer Philip Brasher tells us more about the winners.

David Beckmann, an ordained Lutheran minister as well as a trained economist, left a job at the World Bank to take the helm of Bread for the World 19 years ago. He has led the group in a series of campaigns to change U.S. policy on issues from debt relief for developing countries, overseas agricultural aid and reforming farm subsidies.

Jo Luck served in Bill Clinton's cabinet when he was governor of Arkansas. She later expanded Little Rock, Ark.-based Heifer's donor base from 20,000 people in 1992 to more than 500,000 by 2009.

She built the group, which teaches poor people self-reliance through livestock husbandry, into one of the "premier hunger-fighting nonprofit organizations anywhere in the world," according to the Des Moines-based World Food Prize Foundation, which selects the laureates.

The World Food Prize carries a $250,000 award and is given each year to recognize advancements in increasing or improving global food supplies and expanding access to food.

The laureate is often a scientist, like the award's late founder, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Borlaug. Two years ago, the award was split by two former senators, George McGovern and Robert Dole, who got Congress to create a program for providing school meals to children in the poorest countries.