Purdue researcher, Lutheran wins World Food Prize

by Carrie Draeger, ELCA News Service*

Dr. Gebisa Ejeta, a professor of agronomy at Purdue University, West
Lafayette, Ind., was named the recipient of the World Food Prize for his
research on sorghum plants in his native Africa. Considered the Nobel
Prize of Agriculture, the prize is given to people who have improved
the "quality, quantity or availability or food in the world," according
to the World Food Prize Foundation's Web site. Ejeta and his family are
members of Our Saviour Lutheran Church, West Lafayette, Ind., where they
have worshipped since 1984. Our Saviour is a congregation of the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).

Ejeta was born in Ethiopia, where he received his bachelor's degree in
plant science at Alemaya College, Alemaya, Ethiopia, in 1973. He earned
his master's degree in 1976 and doctorate in 1978 in plant breeding and
genetics in from Purdue. He spent his career advancing the production
and availability of sorghum. The grain helps feed more than 500 million
people in Africa.

The award was announced in Washington, D.C., by U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, and the World
Food Prize Foundation President Kenneth Quinn. Ejeta will be honored and
receive a $250,000 prize Oct.15 at the Iowa State Capitol, Des Moines.

*Information provided by Purdue University and the World Food Prize Foundation.

* Carrie L. Draeger is a senior communication major with a concentration
in journalism at Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Wash. This summer
she is an intern with the ELCA News Service.