Congratulating Cary Fowler on Being Named A World Food Prize Laureate

Floor Speech

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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate my friend and former Memphis neighbor Cary Fowler, currently serving as the U.S. State Department's Special Envoy for Global Food Security, who was recently named a World Food Prize Laureate at a ceremony at the State Department. Dr. Fowler is perhaps best known as the ``father'' of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon described as an ``inspirational symbol of peace and food security for the entire humanity.'' The facility on a Norwegian archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole opened in 2008 and provides ultimate security for more than 1.2 million unique crop varieties, the biological foundation of agriculture and the raw material for all future plant breeding. Dr. Fowler is the former Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an international organization based in Rome cosponsored by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (UN FAO) and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Prior to leading the Crop Diversity Trust, Dr. Fowler was a Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, and a senior staff member of Bioversity International. Earlier, he oversaw the U.N.'s first global assessment of the State of the World's Plant Genetic Resources. He was responsible for drafting and negotiating the first FAO Global Plan of Action on the Conservation and Sustainable Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources, formally adopted by 150 countries in 1996. Following this, Dr. Fowler twice served as Special Assistant to the Secretary General of the World Food Summit and represented the CGIAR in the multi-year negotiations on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources. In 2015, Dr. Fowler was appointed to the Board for International Food and Agricultural Development by President Obama. He is a former board member of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center and former chair of the Livestock Conservancy. Dr. Fowler is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, has delivered a TED Talk, and is a frequent lecturer at universities around the world. He is the author of Shattering: Food, Politics and the Loss of Genetic Diversity, and Unnatural Selection: Technology, Politics and Plant Evolution, as well as Seeds on Ice: Svalbard and the Global Seed Vault. He is also the recipient of several awards including the Right Livelihood Award, the Vavilov Medal, the Heinz Award, Bette Midler's Wind Beneath My Wings Award, the William Brown Award of the Missouri Botanical Garden, the Proctor Medal of the Garden Clubs of America, the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Citizen Leadership, and three honorary doctorates. He is one of two foreign elected members of the Russian Academy of Agricultural Sciences. In his spare time, he and his wife, Amy, an heirloom plant conservationist, tend an apple orchard with more than 100 varieties in New York's Hudson River Valley. In their marriage, one plus one equals three. They are a simpatico couple, loving the Earth and its products. The World Food Prize, awarded since 1986, was the idea of agronomist Norman Borlaug, known as ``the father of the Green Revolution,'' who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977. Dr. Fowler will share this year's award with agricultural scientist Dr. Geoffrey Hawtin. Dr. Fowler's forward-thinking work is protecting humanity itself and helping secure its future, and I congratulate him.

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