The World Food Prize Norman E. Borlaug International Symposium is getting underway here in Des Moines with a couple of side seminars early this morning. The opening ceremony takes place at 1 pm central time.
One of this morning’s seminars was hosted by USDA’s Foreign Agriculture Service, and since we didn’t have a speaker program for that event, I was surprised to walk in the room and see one of this year’s laureates, Hon. George McGovern at the podium. Wish I had known, I would have gotten a recorder on the podium because he had some very interesting remarks about the history of USDA and his role with Bob Dole in expanding and strengthening the school feeding program on a global basis. One of his comments was that he sees the role of USDA growing in the future to help feed a growing population. McGovern will be speaking at a forum this evening with Sen. Dole.
The USDA seminar was hosted by USDA Undersecretary Mark Keenum, who was just at Sunbelt Ag Expo yesterday, and Patricia Sheikh, deputy administrator of USDA-FAS.