Vilsack: World Food Prize to focus on food security, war

NEW YORK – The World Food Prize Borlaug Dialogues this October will focus on global food security, particularly in times of war, rather than on food production, Tom Vilsack, CEO of the World Food Prize Foundation, said here today.

Speaking during a panel discussion following the announcement of the 2026 World Food Prize laureate at the Council on Foreign Relations, Vilsack, a former Democratic governor of Iowa and the Agriculture secretary in the Obama and Biden administrations, said that when agronomist Norman Borlaug established the prize 40 years ago increasing food production was all-important, but today the situation is more complicated.

Today, the world raises a lot of food, but supply chains, which have been disrupted by the wars in Ukraine and Iran, “have fundamental geopolitical implications,” Vilsack said.

“We face a world where food is not only inadequate or unavailable but an instrument of war,” Vilsack explained. Armies destroy the infrastructure needed to grow food and deny food to people or offer it “to recruit people to violence,” he said.

“It is important to elevate this issue,” Vilsack said, explaining that the World Food Prize Foundation decided to announce its laureate here at the Council on Foreign Relations, the premier U.S. foreign affairs think tank and publisher, because two of the roles of the prize are to “spotlight” important issues and to be “a convenor, a bridge-builder bringing people together from all parts of the world” and with different philosophies.

The financial community gathers in Davos, security advocates gather in Munich and the agriculture and food community gathers in Des Moines, Vilsack said, urging the New York audience to attend the Borlaug Dialogues, which will be held Oct. 20-22 to award the World Food Prize to Dutch food scientist Huub Lelieveld for his work on food safety and food waste, and to hold the discussions on global food security.

“It’s imperative for farm groups to be engaged in this conversation because [farmers’] livelihood is connected to it,” Vilsack said. With the U.S. Agency for International Development dismantled and governments reducing other “soft power tools” for influence and defense budgets rising, the Defense Department needs to think as much about food security as the Agriculture Department does, Vilsack added.

In his years in Washington, Vilsack said, he learned that foreign affairs and defense specialists do not appreciate “the sophistication” of agriculture and “think farming is fairly simple” while farm leaders do not recognize the role of food in global security. Vilsack said he recalls pointing out to farm leaders that because so few farmers now produce the nation’s food and the rest of the country is dependent on them, “you are part of national security.”

Vilsack said it was difficult to convince the officials in charge of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a U.S. federal interagency committee chaired by the Treasury Department that reviews foreign investments in U.S. businesses and certain real estate transactions, that someone from the Agriculture Department should be included when decisions on agribusiness and farmland are made.

Vilsack noted that the ownership of farmland by Syngenta, a Chinese-owned pesticide and seed company, is controversial but that Syngenta has also done important research in the United States. There should be a way to allow Syngenta to do its research while still protecting U.S. national security assets, Vilsack said. (In 2025, the state of Arkansas forced Syngenta to sell 150 acres of land it used for research.)

Sharon Burke, a Defense assistant secretary for energy in the Obama administration who is now with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, where Norman Borlaug did his research that led to the Green Revolution, noted that Borlaug’s work began in 1943 in the midst of World War II and that Borlaug provided wheat seeds to India and Pakistan in the mid-1960s when those two countries were at war.

This link between food and agriculture and security “is as old as humanity,” from the Akkadian empire, which historians say fell partly due to famine, to Ukraine, where the Russians tried to stop the production of food and its shipment, Burke said.

“The global agricultural system is in a vulnerable state,” Burke said, noting the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz is limiting supplies of energy and fertilizer and “will reverberate across global markets.”

Thirty percent of the world’s fertilizer is shipped out of the Strait of Hormuz, and “Iran is capable of blocking it,” Burke said.

But Burke also takes a longer-term view. Holding two corn cobs, she said the larger one represents corn as it is grown today in Mexico, and a small one demonstrates how the corn may shrink if there is not research to provide the innovation needed to keep it bigger. In response to a question about whether people are eating “Frankenfoods,” she also noted that the drought-tolerant maize on which CIMMYT is working is not genetically modified.

Climate change is making agricultural production more difficult, but it’s a “fair fight” to keep up production because artificial intelligence and other innovations will respond.

Burke noted that CIMMYT’s mission is to get innovations into the hands of smallholder farmers, who make up the vast majority of farmers in the world.

Swathi Veeravalli, who served as director for climate security and adaptation at the White House National Security Council during the Obama administration and now teaches at Georgetown University and advises governments, defense institutions and international organizations on climate-related risks, said the national security aspect of the agriculture and food debate is to determine how institutions can act “before volatility occurs,” whether that is flash floods or closed ports.

Government systems “are calibrated for visible crises,” but “lack the authority and financing to take action while the problem is still manageable,” Veeravalli said.

Agriculture has focused on efficiency, Veeravalli said, but the dependence on energy and fertilizer through the Strait of Hormuz shows that “we have painted ourselves into a corner.” Veeravalli said that “redundancy is a good thing.” She added she would like to make redundancy “cool.”

The panelists said that even though international organizations do not seem to be popular at the moment and there is a movement toward national or local decision-making, there will eventually be a recognition that international rules-based systems are needed.