This July marks Ruan’s 86th year in business. We celebrate Founder’s Days throughout the month to honor John Ruan and all Ruan team members for their dedication to their work, families, and communities. Through volunteerism and other activities, we seek to celebrate the philanthropic spirit in which Ruan was established.
To this day, Ruan and the Ruan family remain committed to one of Mr. Ruan’s dearest causes: feeding the hungry. Mr. Ruan held the belief that if people around the world could simply get enough food to eat, they would have the opportunity to improve their lives. Another accomplished Iowan, Dr. Norman Borlaug, had been working toward this goal his entire career. Dr. Borlaug dreamed of a Nobel Prize-level award for achievement in agriculture. When he could not persuade the Nobel Committee to add such a category, he started his own prize: the World Food Prize.
Mr. Ruan ultimately endowed the World Food Prize with $10 million to ensure that the prize would carry on indefinitely. Today, with its $250,000 annual award, the World Food Prize is the foremost international award recognizing excellence and progress in overcoming global food production and distribution challenges while inspiring new generations to embrace the cause.
Doctors Lawrence Haddad and David Nabarro were recently announced as the 2018 World Food Prize Laureates during a ceremony at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, according to the World Food Prize. The prize rewards their individual but complementary global leadership in elevating maternal and child undernutrition within the food security and development dialogue at national and international levels with the result of reducing the world’s number of stunted children by 10 million between 2012 and 2017. Haddad and Nabarro will receive the $250,000 award, endowed by Mr. Ruan, during the World Food Prize Borlaug Dialogue and Symposium in October.
Since October 2011, the World Food Prize Foundation is located in the restored, century-old Des Moines Public Library and called the World Food Prize Hall of Laureates. World Food Prize Foundation Chairman John Ruan III led the effort to restore the historical building, which opens its doors annually to diplomats, international business leaders, ambassadors, international heads of government, and agricultural innovators during the Borlaug Dialogue and Symposium.