A video featuring Gebisa Ejeta, Distinguished Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics and International Agriculture at Purdue University and the 2009 World Food Prize recipient, has been uploaded to the AP Video Hub.
In the video, he explains how the current food crisis came to be and what can be done to help developing regions hit the hardest. This video can be found at https://bit.ly/3zCUBqL.
Ejeta says climate change and natural disasters have negatively impacted food production, especially in tropical parts of the world. The war between Russia and Ukraine has also blocked the export of many food products, exacerbating shortages and increasing prices around the world. Ejeta says a disproportionate number of poor people live in developing countries in Africa and Asia. He says that aid in the form of emergency food supplies and assistance in establishing local food production should be a priority.
In 2009, Ejeta received the World Food Prize for his development of sorghum hybrids resistant to drought and parasitic weeds that devastated crops like sorghum. As a result of his work, African farmers saw sorghum yields increase by up to four times that of other local sorghum variants.
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