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[00:00.38] About 20 years ago, Cary Fowler and Geoffrey Hawtin wanted to prevent hunger and protect the world’s food supply.

[00:13.66] The two men imagined a so-called “doomsday vault” for plant seeds. (A vault is a secure storage structure.)

[00:25.35] Fowler and Hawtin’s goal was to keep a supply of seeds safe if existing seed banks were threatened by war, climate change, or other crises.

[00:39.70] They decided to build their storage building into the side of a mountain north of the Arctic Circle.

[00:50.59] “To a lot of people today, it sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do,”

[00:57.23] Fowler said from Saudi Arabia in an interview with the Associated Press.

[01:03.60] Seeds, he added, are a valuable natural resource that needs protection.

[01:11.57] But Fowler said: “Fifteen years ago, shipping a lot of seeds to the closest place to the North Pole that you can fly into (and) putting them inside a mountain…” did not sound reasonable.

[01:27.77] In his words, it was “…the craziest idea anybody ever had.”

[01:33.88] Their idea became the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Svalbard.

[01:44.51] The vault opened in 2008 and now holds 1.25 million seed samples from nearly every country in the world.

[01:57.26] The structure was built into the side of a mountain.

[02:01.24] It protects the seeds of over 6,000 kinds of agriculturally important plants.

[02:09.21] The Crop Trust website says: “Its purpose is to backup genebank collections to secure the foundation of our future food supply.”

[02:23.29] Last week, Fowler and Hawtin were named the 2024 World Food Prize winners for their work.

[02:34.18] Fowler is now the U.S. special diplomat for global food security.

[02:41.09] Hawtin is an agricultural scientist from Britain.

[02:45.60] They were named the winners of the yearly prize at the U.S. Department of State in Washington.

[02:53.57] Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised the men at the announcement for their “critical role in preserving crop diversity.”

[03:06.05] For many years, countries have created seed banks to store seeds for future use.

[03:13.49] But Fowler said he was concerned that climate change would cause disorder in agriculture.

[03:21.99] This would make the seed supply even more important.

[03:27.30] Hawtin is an executive board member at the Global Crop Diversity Trust, an international nonprofit group.

[03:37.40] He said there were a lot of threats to crops in the past, such as insects, disease, land degradation, and political unrest.

[03:50.41] He said that climate change has made these problems worse.

[03:56.26] So, he and Fowler saw a need for additional secure seed storage.

[04:03.69] Hawtin explained that climate change is changing pests and diseases.

[04:14.32] He added, “Climate change is putting a whole lot of extra problems on what has always been significant ones.”

[04:22.29] Fowler and Hawtin said they hope winning the World Food Prize will help them raise more money for seed banks around the world. Operating them is not too costly.

[04:36.10] However, the financial support needs to continue forever.

[04:41.94] “This is really a chance to get that message out and say, look, this relatively small amount of money is our insurance policy -- our insurance policy that we’re going to be able to feed the world in 50 years,” Hawtin said.

[05:01.07] Norman Borlaug established the World Food Prize.

[05:06.38] He received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his part in what is called the “Green Revolution.”

[05:20.73] That was a big effort to make crops more productive so the world’s growing population would not go hungry.

[05:27.90] This fall, Fowler and Hawtin will accept the prize in Des Moines, Iowa, the city where the food prize foundation is based.

[05:37.20] They will also split the $500,000 award.

[05:43.04] This year’s prize will be presented at the yearly Norman E. Borlaug International Dialogue.

[05:51.54] The conference will be held in Des Moines from October 29 to the 31.