The vegetable grower Simon Groot from the Netherlands became the winner of the 2019 World Food Prize.

Simon Groot was honored for his transformative role in empowering millions of small farmers in more than 60 countries to generate higher incomes from increased vegetable production, which has helped hundreds of millions of consumers gain greater access to nutritious vegetables for a healthy diet.

Ambassador Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize, said Groot helped develop varieties of vegetables with improved disease resistance and significantly higher yields.

“As the use of its seeds has spread throughout the Philippines and in Thailand, Indonesia, and throughout Southeast Asia, the daily life of farmers has been improved and consumers have greater access to nutritious vegetables,” said the president of the World Food Prize.

According to Quinn, Groot has created a global network of seed producers that annually change the lives of 20 million farmers.

A prize of $ 250,000 is a recognition of the unprecedented achievements of Groot as the founder and leader of East-West Seed. Over the past four decades, his initiative has created a vibrant, small-scale, tropical-vegetable seed industry, starting in Southeast Asia and spreading across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Today, East-West Seed serves more than 20 million small farmers in more than 60 tropical countries.

Groot will receive the World Food Prize at a ceremony at the magnificent Iowa State Capitol Building in Des Moines, Iowa on the evening of October 17, 2019.