Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig, an agronomist and climatologist, was awarded the 2022 World Food Prize for her work on the effect of climate change on food production.  She is a Senior Research Scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and is an Adjunct Research Scientist at the Columbia Climate School at Columbia University. The Prize was established by Nobel Laureate, Dr. Norman Borlaug, in 1986, to recognize scientists who improve the quality and availability of food.  The World Food Prize is regarded as the “Nobel” of agriculture and carries an award of $250,000.

Jose Fernandez, Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment, noted, “Climate change has already had a significant and negative impact on global agricultural production and its impact is only going to get worse.  We are seeing rice fields drown in floods and other crops wither in drought.  We would likely not understand all these problems as well as we do today without the work of Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig.”

The World Food Prize Foundation credits the work of the 2022 Laureate with helping decision-makers in more than 90 nations to establish plans to prepare for climate change.  Her studies have led to models of greenhouse gas release from components of agriculture and forestry, leading to the first projection of the effect of climate change on agricultural regions by the EPA.

Dr. Rosenzweig was instrumental in encouraging Dr. James Hanson, a NASA colleague, to provide Congressional testimony in 1988, confirming the link between greenhouse gases and climate change.